


Life Sentence

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, jurydutyfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-21 19:46:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2480243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s hard when the only things you have in common are Brandon and that court case you are legally bound not to discuss…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“And can you think of any reason why you would be unfit to serve on this jury?”

“No, your honor.”

“All right.” Judge Arryn squared his papers and looked down at the attorneys, both of whom had shifted themselves forward slightly in their seats.  “You all can go outside and wait for a few minutes while we confer. I remind you that you are all not to talk about the details you have gained from this case when outside of the courtroom.”

There were about twenty of them in the group, and their chairs scraped against the hardwood floor and they filed out into the hallway.  Almost immediately, phones were back in their hands as people checked their emails, checked their text messages, went on the internet.

Ned sat down on a bench and stared out the window, waiting.

The air conditioning wasn’t quite strong enough, he decided, but that hardly mattered. He was glad enough that there _was_ air conditioning. Too often, he had found, buildings in New York didn’t have them, which made summer horrifyingly unbearable. One of the first things he had bought for his apartment was a window unit, which he left on day and night. Sure, his electricity bill went through the roof, but nothing mattered quite so much as getting home and feeling a blast of cold that made him shiver as he stripped off sweaty clothes and flopped on his bed.

The air conditioning in the courthouse kept him from sweating, but it didn’t make him feel cool. He knew he was an anomaly, though.  Robert didn’t understand how anyone could possibly want to be as cold as Ned did all the time, but then again, Robert could never understand. Robert was from California and had been raised warm.

“Do you have a pen by any chance?  Mine died.” Ned glanced to his left and saw a young woman looking at him with clear blue eyes.  She was holding the pen between two fingers, as though it was a piece of evidence.

“Yeah.  Sure.”  He dug into his pocket and produced a ballpoint, handing it to her. She smiled at him, a brief wide smile and returned to writing in a journal, her auburn braid seeming to stretch towards her stomach as she bent her head.  A moment later, she handed it back to him.  “Thanks,” she said with a smile.

“No problem,” he shrugged.

“Shopping list,” she explained.

He nodded, then frowned. “Why don’t you put it on your phone?”

She smiled wryly. “I imagine my phone will die while I’m in the subway.  It has shit battery life and likes to kill itself looking for service.  And I think the fact that it gets service in stations but not in the tunnels makes it worse.”

Ned nodded, knowing the problem all too well.  “At some point, they’ll put service in the tunnels, right?” he said hopefully. It wasn’t too bad up near him. The 1 was above ground above Columbia and he never had to go too far south—never south of 72nd without good reason.  But all the same—the A was a nightmare.

“Well,” she sighed, “They haven’t yet.  Though there’s wifi now in some places, so that’s good.  But still, my hopes aren’t high.”

She had tucked her shopping list into her purse and had angled her body towards him.  Ned tried to remember which one she was from when they’d been answering Judge Arryn’s questions.  Was she the law student?  Or the kindergarten teacher?  They’d been behind him and he had felt as though it would be rude to turn and stare.  He had also felt it would be rude to not look at them, so he had compromised by half-shifting in his seat and looking at the knees of the woman at the end of the back row. She was wearing some African print pants and jiggled her leg with nerves.

“Have you lived in New York long?” he asked her.

“Since college,” she replied easily.  “It’s a good place. You?”

“Moved here for grad school,” he replied.

“Columbia, right? Architecture?” she said the last word slowly, as though she was both unsure that she was remembering properly and that she should be revealing that she remembered.  Ned nodded.  “Did you know the other Columbia student?” she jerked her head down the hallway to a young woman who was typing into her iPhone with a frown on her face.

Ned shook his head. “Nah.”

“All right,” called the officer who had led them upstairs from the waiting area earlier that day. “Judge Arryn wants you back in.”

The twenty of them stood, turning phones back off and filed back into the courtroom. They all seemed to take the same seats that they had been in before, and Ned was aware that the woman—he’d forgotten her name, and hadn’t asked.  That was rude of him—was behind him now and to the left.

“All right,” Judge Arryn said and began reading off a list.  “Eddard Stark, Davos Seaworth, Alannys Harlaw, Chataya Elgaya, Catelyn Tully, please stay put, you’re going to be on my jury. The rest of you are free to depart for lunch and should return to the waiting room at one thirty for the rest of your duty.

Those whose names had not been called stood and left the courtroom, and Ned noticed that the woman he had spoken to had stayed put as well.

“All right,” said Judge Arryn.  “You all are actually free to go for the rest of the day.  I’ll be summoning another batch to check on tomorrow morning. I need three more jurors before we can begin.  You should call in tomorrow before one thirty to see if we will begin tomorrow afternoon. If we do, we’ll begin at two o’clock, so if you don’t call, be sure to show up by then.  Any questions?”

No one had any, so they were dismissed, and Ned pulled out his cell phone and emailed his internship supervisor to let her know that he would be on a jury and that he’d keep her posted as he could.  He walked to the Chambers Street 1 station, and thought briefly that he would die as he descended into the hot, humid horror that was the New York City subway system in the summer.  Ned walked to the very end of the platform and glanced down the tunnel to see if he could see a headlamp.

When he’d first moved to the city, he’d seen everyone doing that, and it had terrified him. What happened if they fell and their heads got smashed in by a train?  There were people who got shoved in front of tracks—he knew that. It had been on the news. But at some point during his first year, he had stopped worrying about that, and had begun to understand the impatience that all New Yorkers felt while waiting for the subway. He didn’t think he’d ever be a “New Yorker”.  He was too much a Midwesterner for that.  Portion sizes were too small, things were too expensive, and it was strange not having a car. But he could fake it well enough by now, and of that he was moderately proud.

“Where are you headed?”

He turned around and saw the woman from the jury, the one with the pretty eyes who had asked for a pen, standing there, smiling warmly at him.

“Home,” he replied. “Technically, I should go to my internship, but…”

She chuckled. “They gave you the full day off. I know the feeling. Though I suppose that I don’t really have anything to do right now.”

“You’re a teacher?” he asked, because he wanted to be sure.

She nodded. “Kindergarten.”

“How is that?” he asked.

“It’s good,” she shrugged. “Kids are both delightful and little monsters and I don’t know how they manage to be both, but they do.”

The 1 arrived and they both got on, and, because it was the middle of the day, there were even seats. She sat across the train car from him and pulled out a book.

“What are you reading?” he blurted out.  He knew that most North Easterners liked to be left alone, but she was nice, and he still didn’t know her name, and if they were going to be on a jury, he should at least know her name.

“What?  Oh.”  She glanced at the cover as though she had forgotten.  “A book my sister sent me.  It’s a romance that she insists I’ll love, but I’m not too impressed so far.”  She wrinkled her nose slightly.  “It’s got a kind of shady love interest, but there we are.  She and I have different types, I suppose.”

“Is she older or younger?” Ned asked.

“Younger. Two years younger. She’s back home in Boston now, and doesn’t really know what to do with herself and driving my dad and younger brother up the wall.”  She rolled her eyes, remembering something that Ned didn’t understand. “Do you have siblings?” she asked.

“Two brothers and a sister,” Ned supplied. 

“Younger or older?”

“One brother is older. The other two are younger.”

“Are they in New York, or…?”

“My older brother is in San Francisco.  My sister and younger brother are in Minneapolis.”

“Oh, are you from there?” she asked.

“Nearby,” he said. “A little bit north—Winterfell.”

She smiled at him. “Do you like the east coast?”

“Well…” Ned didn’t know how to answer, because yes, he supposed, but it wasn’t home.  She laughed though, as though understanding.

“It’s different,” she smiled.  “My ex was from Winterfell and he used—” she froze, and the smile slipped from her lips, her eyes widening slightly.

“What?”

“Oh.”

“Oh what?”

“You’re Brandon’s brother, aren’t you?  You look like him.”

“Yes?” Ned said slowly then it dawned on him.  She’d called herself Catelyn in the courtroom, but Brandon had never called her Catelyn.  Brandon was big on the one-syllable nicknames.  Ned, Ben, Ly, but god forbid you call him Bran.  “You’re Cat Tully.”

Cat nodded, biting her lip.

Ned didn’t know what to say—couldn’t know what to say.  What do you way to your brother’s ex?  Especially the ex that he jilted while drunk and with a high school friend who was visiting from out of town.  Brandon and Barbrey (or “Barb,” as Brandon always called her) were still together out in San Francisco, making tons of money commuting down to Silicon Valley every day.  And Cat…Brandon hadn’t really spoken about Cat beyond saying “We broke up.”  Ned had only gotten the full story from Lyanna, because Lyanna had a way with Brandon.

“I—” Ned began, but he stopped. 

Cat shrugged. “It’s not a problem,” she said, though her face was not so open, not so welcoming anymore.  And she opened her book and began reading.

When she got off the train at 86th street, it was with a quiet nod and a “see you tomorrow,” but the smile was forced, and Ned thought, not for the first time, that he wished Brandon had some sense of dignity.

* * *

 

Now she knew why he looked familiar. 

 _Brandon_.  The name hung heavy in her heart as she climbed up the stairs that would take her up to 86 th and Broadway.  Of all the exes he had to be related to, it just had to be Brandon, didn’t it? Brandon of the spectacular abs, the warm laugh, and the wandering dick.  Brandon, who was really just…no—she wasn’t going to think about Brandon.  Not right now. Because four years had been enough time, right?  Four years, and she _still_ got upset thinking about him. Weren’t you supposed to stop caring about your exes at some point?  Weren’t you supposed to get over them and what they had done and move on? 

She stepped into the grocery store two blocks from her house and made her way through the aisles, not really seeing anything.  She placed eggs and milk and cereal and sandwich makings and lentils and everything she could think of into the cart, then checked her list to make sure that she’d remembered everything.  But by the time she was done paying and was walking as quickly as she could back to her apartment, all she could think about was Ned and, even though she tried not to, Brandon.

Brandon had always laughed at Ned.  He’d called him stiff, and serious, and with no sense of fun.  “Ned just likes being alone in the wilderness,” Brandon had laughed when she’d complained about how Lysa was far too seduced by the cosmopolitan nature of New York.  Ned, according to Brandon, was boring.  Ned, at least as he had interacted with Catelyn that day, and over the phone when she’d called Brandon over school breaks years before, was polite—which was a damn sight more than Brandon ever—

God, she had felt so uncomfortable sitting there with him on the subway, realizing just how much he looked like Brandon, only shorter and burlier.  But then again, how much of that was…Brandon had always said that Ned was quiet, and easy to shut up in a conversation if you made him feel nervous.  What if….

She didn’t know Ned, and…and she was going to have to interact with him regularly until this case was over and they had pronounced a sentence.  So…so that meant that she didn’t have to make up her mind right now—not about anything.  And that she certainly didn’t have to change her opinion of Brandon just because Ned was around.  And if Ned wanted her to, if he started making excuses she didn’t want to hear…well then he wasn’t…Brandon had always said he was one of the more understanding people of the world.  It was one of the nice things that Brandon had said about Ned, understanding, loyal, generous, kind too, on top of stiff, boring, with no sense of fun.  It had been, in fact, what had made her want to date him.  Because sure—he was an arrogant bastard with a biting wit, but it was evident that he loved his little brother, and maybe even admired him.  But if Ned didn’t understand her, what she was thinking…then maybe Brandon was wrong. 

And Brandon had been wrong about a whole lot of things.

Oh this was all too confusing, and she was far too agitated to think about it just then. So she pulled out the book that Lysa had lent her, because no matter how stupid it was, at least it would be a distraction. 

Or at least, that was what she thought.  Because the hero of the book, a young man named Charles Dailey, was tall with a long face, dark hair and grey eyes.  She’d never connected him to Brandon before—not once.  Brandon was not half so honorable as Charles Dailey. But Ned…When Margaret Brown, the book’s heroine, noticed just how strong Charles’ arms were, just how gentle his smile, all Cat could think of was Ned.

* * *

 

She sat behind Ned again when they settled in the jury box the next afternoon, between a huge boy—Gregory? Something like that?  She couldn’t quite remember, but she’d have it soon enough—who looked no older than eighteen, and a woman in her sixties or seventies, Catelyn would guess, who was wearing a fine silk shirt and golden bangles patterned with garnets, and prepared herself for the beginnings of the case.

Judge Arryn had said that it could take some weeks if necessary, and that it was complicated. Racketeering and money-laundering charges were the least of the Jorah Mormont’s worries in the human trafficking case brought against him.  He was a surly looking man, she noticed, with a scrubby beard and a ruddy face. He was dressed nicely, though Catelyn wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse.  _Human trafficking_. The thought made her shiver.

The lawyers spent most of the afternoon questioning his wife, a pretty young thing with blonde curls who looked thoroughly terrified to be saying anything at all. Periodically, she would cast glances over at her husband, who was decidedly not looking at her as she said words like “I mean…I didn’t…I didn’t think that he would.  Why would he?  The logging company makes plenty of money and…”

She almost felt bad for the poor girl.  It was clear that her husband’s attorney, a man called Tarly, was a stubborn man, and a harsh one; the district attorney, Selmy, by comparison, was gentle, but Catelyn sensed that that almost made her more nervous.

It was, as her uncle had told her over the phone the night before, interesting.  Interesting not in small part because it was like watching a play, or because it was like solving a mystery, but also because, sitting in the second row in the jury box, Catelyn could watch the reactions of her fellow jurors.

It was evident very quickly that Chataya Elgaya, a dancer and yoga instructor from Tribeca, was plainly horrified by the charges.  She did her best to hide it, of course, since jurors were supposed to be completely neutral until they passed a verdict, but not long into Lynesse Hightower’s testimony, where she described the room she had found, with four young Nicaraguan women sharing a space that was barely fifty square feet, Chataya made a noise of disgust that carried just as far as Catelyn’s ears if not further.

Davos Seaworth, a man who worked in imports and exports, grew stony-faced when Selmy pressed Lynesse for more details about the yacht that she and Jorah owned, and which had been taken in as evidence as the potential vessel of transport for the victims in question.

She noticed how people shifted in their seats, how Gerion Lannister leaned forward when each question was asked, how Moshe Bar Emmon seemed to rock back and forth as he listened, how Alannys Harlaw fiddled with her wedding ring.  She did her best not to notice how, of all of them, Ned Stark sat still as stone, watching intently.  She was sitting at an angle to him, and could see his profile and the way his grey eyes flicked back and forth between the litigators and Ms. Hightower like he was absorbing every word and she wondered what he was thinking.

Because that was the thing—she couldn’t tell. It was frustrating on every level.  Brandon she could have read like a book. He would have been sitting there in his chair, probably tilting it back onto two feet and resting his feet against the front paneling of the jury box, but Ned didn’t.  He sat with a straight back, his hands resting on his knees, and she just knew that he would remain that way until the court was adjourned for the day.

She and Ned took the same subway uptown again, and they didn’t say a word this time.  Ned was on his phone, reading something, and Catelyn fished out Lysa’s novel, and when she got off on 86th Street with a quiet, “See you tomorrow,” he looked surprised that she had said anything at all. It almost made her wish she hadn’t said anything.  But at the same time, she felt a warm sort of gladness that she had.

* * *

 

Ned unlocked the door to his and Robert’s apartment and was met with snores.  Robert was asleep on the couch, an empty bottle of bear lying on the floor next to a dangling hand and _Wayne’s World_ still playing on his laptop on the coffee table. Ned stared at him for a moment, then sighed and went to pick up the bottle and close the laptop, cutting off Wayne’s and Garth’s trip to Milwaukee to see Alice Cooper play. When the laptop snapped shut, Robert grunted and jerked awake, his eyes searching out Ned’s.

“Wha’ time is it?” Robert mumbled.

“Five thirty,” Ned said. He went into the kitchen and deposited Robert’s beer bottle in the recycling before going and grabbing one of his own.  “I was thinking about ordering a pizza.”

“Pepperoni and sausage,” Robert called before Ned even asked him if he wanted any.  Ned let out an amused huff and called Tino’s and placed the order, then he went and dropped himself onto the couch next to Robert.

“How’s the case?” Robert asked, still sounding a little bleary.

“You know I can’t talk about it,” said Ned, glancing at Robert out of the side of his eyes.

“Yeah—but it’s not like anyone would find out,” Robert said.  “Who’m I gonna tell?”

“That’s not the point, Robert.  I am under oath,” Ned said, taking a sip of his beer.  Robert reached over and took the bottle out of Ned’s hand, took a swig, and handed it back. 

“So?  Come on.  I’m not going to—“

“No, Robert.”

“Fine.  Always with a stick up your ass, aren’t you?” Robert sighed and stretched.  Then, trying and failing to sound casual, he asked, “Have you heard anything from Lyanna?”

“No,” Ned replied. “So long as I’m living with you, she won’t talk to me.”

“That seems a bit harsh,” Robert said testily.  “You _are_ her brother.” He was staring at his hands, picking a hangnail off his thumb.

“Yeah—well…you pissed her off, Robert,” Ned replied.  It really was too hot in this room for him to have this conversation right now. “And she’ll forgive me, but she doesn’t want shit to do with you and—“

“It’s not my bloody fault,” Robert yelped, “Look—she just doesn’t understand, ok?  And—”

Ned raised a hand. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.  Really—I am not. That’s what I told her, that’s what I’m telling you.  Because honestly—it’s not me.  Ok? You two need to work it out, or you don’t, but I refuse to be your fucking go-between.”

Only then did Robert seem to see him clearly.  He frowned, brows furrowing and eyes narrowing.  “What’s with you?”

“What’s with me what?” Ned asked.  He leaned back on the couch, resting his head on the back so that he was staring up at the ceiling.  There was some paint coming off it that he was really thinking about chipping away and painting over, but he thought that might make the landlord angry.

“You’re all…tetchy.”

“Tetchy? Have you been watching British movies all day?  Bloody? Tetchy?”

“Nah—I was watching some TV yesterday though, so it probably took a few days to set in. Netflix has _so_ much BBC goodness.”

Ned blinked. He really couldn’t fathom Robert watching the BBC, but decided not to push the matter.  He sighed and closed his eyes, reaching his hands up and pressing the heels of his palms into his face.  He saw stars briefly, then colors swirled behind his eyelids, and when he opened his eyes again, the world seemed calmer.

“Brandon’s ex is on the jury with me.”

“Which one?” Robert asked.

“Catelyn. Cat Tully.” 

Robert screwed up his face, trying to remember.  “Was she the one who came over to your place at Thanksgiving and you had a total boner for?”

“No—that was Ashara Dayne. And…” Ned shuddered. Why was it that Robert had to phrase it that way?  It hadn’t been a ‘boner’—he’d had a crush was all.  And it was precisely because of that crush that Brandon had ended it and gotten together with Cat in the first place.

“And?” prompted Robert.

“And I have to like…I don’t know.  Brandon was a shitbag to her.  Why do I always have to clean up his messes?”

“Oh!  Was this the one he screwed around on?”

“Yes!” Ned said emphatically. “Yes, and she’s nice, and pretty, and a kindergarten teacher, and smart and—”

“Wholly not Brandon’s type.”  Ned glared at Robert. “What?  It’s the truth, isn’t it?  Brandon doesn’t like wholesome.  He likes to noodle wholesome and then get nasty.”

“You really have a way with words,” grumbled Ned.  Robert was the only person Ned knew who spoke like this.  In college, Ned had tried to get him to have a little more respect when he spoke, but Robert had just blown him off. Robert did things like that. But it was true. It was, in fact, exactly what Robert said.  Brandon didn’t like the type of girl you settled down with.  He wasn’t a nineteen fifties “look pop, this is my girl, we’re going steady” type—he was the kind to get drunk and hurl half-full cans of beer at the wall while arguing with a girl, then make up with her and fuck her against that same wall, probably while there was still beer dripping down it. Cat was obviously the former type; Barbrey the latter.  No wonder he’d thrown Cat over.

“I’ve been told,” Robert was saying dramatically.  “So—what’s the deal?  You’re not Brandon. You’re a good guy with capital gs. Surely that shouldn’t be a problem for when you want to get your end in.”

“Get my— _Robert!_ ” 

“What—that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“I—” Cat was beautiful, that was true. And she had a nice smile, and Ned had always been of the opinion that you could tell a lot about a girl from her smile.  But that didn’t mean that he—“Look, not everything’s about sex.  And seriously, cut the BBC shit—I never want to hear you say ‘get your end in’ ever again.”

“Sure it’s not,” shrugged Robert.  “Well—I’m in favor of it. But, then again, when was the last time you got laid?”  Ned reached over and smacked him and Robert guffawed.  “Yeah—you definitely need to get your end in.”

“Cat’s not the type of girl you do that with.”

“Do what with? Have sex?  Look, Neddie—most girls are the type of girls you have sex with.”

“No—not like. Get your end in sex. She’s not for that. She’s….she’s…” Ned scrambled for words. “She’s a _kindergarten_ teacher, Robert.”

“Oh, like they can’t be nasty,” Robert snorted.

“Oh stop it. That’s not what I mean.”

“Well—here’s the thing then.  So she’s not the type you have a fling with.  That’s not a problem.  You don’t like flings anyway because you’re a weird-ass motherfucker.  So date her, ok?  And stop agonizing.”

“I don’t want to date her, Robert.  Or fuck her or anything.  She’s my brother’s ex.  I wouldn’t do that.”

“Are you saying that Brandon wouldn’t diddle your ex?  Because you know he would.”

“How many phrases do you know for ‘have sex’?”

“All of them,” said Robert seriously.  “And answer the question.”

Ned glared at him and took a sip of beer.  He did not reply.

“Not everything has to be a question of what Brandon would or wouldn’t do,” he said at last.

“Then stop making it one,” Robert shrugged.  “Look, if you don’t want to date her, that’s a whole different matter. I’m just giving you bro advice, ok?”

Ned rolled his eyes and got up.  “I’m going to go lie down.  Let me know when the pizza gets here?”

“You got it.” Robert reopened his laptop and a moment later, Ned heard the sounds of a montage at a beer factory filling the room before he slammed his bedroom door and threw himself on his bed.


	2. Chapter 2

Catelyn sat in the little park a block away from the courthouse for lunch, flicking through articles on her phone.  It was surprisingly cool today, given that the sun was high in the sky and beating down bright on the marble buildings near city hall.  She felt a breeze on the back of her neck, and some of the hair dangling down from her updo tickling her skin as she munched on the bagel that she had bought at a coffee stand. 

It almost felt a pity to be inside during these summer days.  She wanted to be up in Central Park, lying on the great lawn in a bathing suit and listening to music, maybe doing a crossword puzzle, and relishing the fact that she didn’t have work.  To make matters worse, the courtroom itself was windowless, and so, even though she was outside for lunch, Catelyn almost despaired the time when she would have to go back into the room and watch the proceedings.

It was interesting.  And honestly, she doesn’t have anything else to be doing right now apart from researching some Ed programs that she could apply to.  But to miss sunny days…She sighed and checked the time.  She had half an hour before she needed to be back upstairs, and she contemplated going on a walk up to Canal Street and finding a knockoff handbag, or a set of shoes or something.  It would be good to stretch her legs.  She was not used to sitting all day—that was for sure.  Her kids kept her on her toes constantly. 

She tucked her phone away and started.  Ned was sitting across the path from her on a park bench.  His eyes widened mid-bite of sandwich and she could tell that her being startled had startled him.  She laughed and rested a hand over her heart.  “How long have you been sitting there?” she asked.

He chewed and swallowed and smiled embarrassedly.  “Ten minutes, maybe?  It…it looked like a good place for lunch.”  He looked a little sheepish. 

“It is,” she replied.  “You should have said something.”

“You looked engrossed,” he shrugged.

She nodded, and he nodded and she felt silence build between them.  Brandon would never have let silence build between them.  He would have dived into some dramatic story about where he had bought his lunch, or told her about the tv show he was marathoning, probably spoiling the ending for her.  Ned didn’t though.  Ned just took another bite of his sandwich.

“How has your lunch break been?” she asked him.

He shrugged.  “Uneventful.  I had to call my roommate and make sure he replenished the beer he went through last night.  And reminding Robert why he was hungover is always a fun time.”

Catelyn chuckled.  “How long have you known him?”

“He was my roommate Freshman year. And…yeah.  We’ve been friends since then.  And he’s unemployed right now, so he’s binge drinking and watching his way through everything on Netflix, so…yeah.”  He did that thing that Brandon did—that _Minnesotans_ and other people who lived on the Canadian border did, where they had that tendency to end sentences in a “so…yeah…” with oddly pinched vowels.  It put a smile on her face.

Ned looked at her curiously, but she didn’t know how to explain it so she just waved her hand dismissively and he shrugged.  

“How was your lunch break?” he asked, looking very much as though he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be asking the question.

“Well enough,” she smiled.  “I was thinking about running to Chinatown super quickly when you showed up.”

“Oh—I didn’t mean to get in the way of your plans,” he said quickly, shifting in his seat.

“You didn’t.  I can go any old time.”

“Is it nearby?” Ned asked.

“Is it—“ Cat began laughing.  “It’s like two blocks that way,” she gestured over her shoulder.  “How do you not know where Chinatown is?”

He shrugged.  “I don’t come downtown a lot.  I mean, I go to where I work my internship, but for the most part, I’m up in Harlem.”

“Tomorrow, we’re going for lunch in Chinatown, because if you’re going to be in this neck of the woods every day, you have to at least have some Chinese food at _some_ point,” she said, firmly. There were things you couldn’t compromise on in this world.   

Ned’s eyes widened, and he nodded.  “Sure.  I—yeah.  That sounds good.  I like Chinese food.”

“Good,” Catelyn replied.  “Although…” she paused, and cocked her head.  “Do you mean New York Chinese food, or the crap they pretend is Chinese food elsewhere in the country?”  She said it lightly, hearing the laughter in her own voice, remembering the horror of going out for Chinese during a conference in Ohio a few years back. 

“Well…” Ned flushed, “There’s a place I order from near me.  But I can’t tell if it’s an accurate representation.  It’s where the undergrads go when they have the munchies.”

Cat nodded knowingly.  “Well, you’ll compare tomorrow.  And I am sure you’ll love it.”  Brandon had been obsessed with Chinatown.  He had waxed on for hours about the perfection of Shanghai soup dumplings and dim sum.  And if Ned didn’t feel the same, she’d know he was a lost cause.

It was only as they walked back into the court building together that the full magnitude of what she had done really hit her.  She had just insisted on Ned’s getting lunch with her.  He didn’t—he wouldn’t think she was asking him on a date, right?  Surely that wasn’t his expectation.  He certainly seemed like a reasonable person, and reasonable people didn’t assume that lunches between shifts in a courtroom were dates, right?  She was overthinking it.  She knew she was.  And she should stop.  She’d done that with Brandon, and look how that had ended up.

* * *

“I swear to god, sometimes I feel like we should just move to some island and educate them ourselves.  It would be easier.”

Cat was nodding sympathetically as Alannys fiddled with her phone.  “And, of course, Balon’s just sitting there talking about how all of this is ridiculous, and they should just go to public school, as if he doesn’t realize that getting into one of these schools young could get his kinds into Harvard.” 

Ned did not envy her.  Alannys had two sons, and the eldest of the two seemed to be about the age where he would be going to kindergarten. 

“I mean,” Alannys continued, “am I crazy?  Please tell me I’m crazy.  I would more than happily _not_ go through all the horrifying kowtowing of getting Rodrik into a _kindergarten_.  Sure, when he’s older and going to high school I’ll do my bit, but _kindergarten?_ ”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine wherever he goes,” said Cat. “In my professional opinion, focus on him at this age without worrying about what he’ll be in fifteen years.  You’ll have more than enough time for that then.”

Alannys was nodding and when the elevator dinged, she was the first one out of the elevator door, her phone to her ear as she called her children’s babysitter. 

“So, lunch?” Cat asked him.  She was standing more heavily on her right than her left, her purse dangling limply from her shoulder.

“I’d wondered if you had remembered,” he said.  He’d been thinking about it all morning.  Largely because he’d made the mistake of mentioning it to Robert, who had almost immediately insisted that it was Cat’s way of hinting that she wanted him for a lunchtime quickie.  “No.  That’s not how she is, Robert.”  Because even if he _hadn’t_ heard enough stories about her from Brandon to know that it wasn’t, one conversation with her would have been enough.  But Robert seemed determined that she be a naughty kindergarten teacher, and didn’t seem inclined to let the idea go.

Cat pressed her hand to her heart and made a face of mock outrage.  “What?  Forget Chinese food?  You must have me mistaken for another dame, sir.”

“Sorry,” he said flushing, and her expression softened. 

“Chinese food from Chinatown is important.  You’ll understand why once you’ve had it,” she said happily, leading him past security and opening the door out onto the street.  Humid heat hit Ned like a truck, and for a moment, he seriously considered suggesting that they call for takeout instead.  But Catelyn was already fishing out a pair of sunglasses from her purse, and was sweeping up her hair into a high ponytail and he knew that he’d have to brave it.

“God, I love summer,” she breathed happily as they crossed the street.

“Hmm,” he said noncommittally, and she glanced at him. 

“You don’t?”

“Well,” he scrambled for words and as he did so she muttered, “Oh god, you’re not obsessed with Minnesota winters the way that Brandon was, are you?”

“I—well…It’s a little hard to escape them.  But no.  I’m not obsessed.  There’s only so many times you can use a potato as a hammer before the novelty wears off.”

“What?” Catelyn guffawed.  Truly guffawed—not a delicate giggle, or even a suppressed snort.  A full on guffaw.

“Well…if you freeze a potato solid…which you can do when it gets to be negative thirty at night…”

“You can use it as a hammer?”

“You’d be surprised at what you can use as a hammer when you try hard enough.  And it helps in winter when most things freeze quite thoroughly.”

“What did you use your potato hammer for?” she asked, and there—there was the suppressed humor he had been expecting. 

“Hitting Robert mostly.”

She nodded understandingly.  “You know, there are worse things in life than hitting your roommate with a frozen potato.  Lord knows I should have tried that in college, but it was never quite cold enough here.”

“See, I like east coast winters,” Ned said.  “They’re…I don’t know. They’re not wholly unrelenting.  And that’s nice.  Plus they’re not actually cold.  It’s like a brisk autumn day.”

Catelyn rolled her eyes at him and muttered something under her breath about snobby wintery Midwesterners before pushing open the door to a Chinese restaurant with lots of gold and red decorations.

It was not overcrowded, which surprised him, because in his admittedly minimal understanding of Chinatown, he’d come to believe that restaurants were always packed to the bursting point.  But there were empty tables, and the waiters even looked relaxed as they jabbered at one another in Chinese. 

“So,” Catelyn said, after she had glanced through the menu.  He noticed that she suddenly seemed much less confident now that they were actually sitting down, as though she didn’t quite know what to say now that they were confronted with a meal alone.  “So…You are…” she was scrambling, definitely scrambling, and he saw a bit of a blush creeping up onto her cheeks, as she looked away.  He wished he could think of something to say—anything to say.  She had done so much of the conversational legwork, but he didn’t know what he wanted to say.  Because saying he was sorry about Brandon didn’t really begin to cover it, and it seemed to be weighing down everything else that came to mind.

 _What did you study in school?_   Where you were with Brandon.

 _Are you dating anyone?_   Not my brother, obviously.

 _What do you do in your spare time?_   I can’t remember if Brandon was even assed enough to tell me.

 _Do you live alone_?  That was just creepy, even if he was only asking if she had roommates or not.

And he could only imagine her questions were similar. 

Ned had never been more grateful for the arrival of a waiter in his life, and while Catelyn ordered, he glanced at the television over the bar where he saw two sportscasters talking about the all-star game.

“Do you follow baseball?” Catelyn asked.

He shook his head.  “We do football where I’m from.”

“Oh, you mean the fake American pastime?” she teased.

“You did not just say that,” he said as seriously as he could.

She smirked at him.  “You are in New York, dining with a Red Sox fan.”

“Yeah, well, good for you, but can I introduce you to the glory of the Minnesota Vikings?”

Her eyebrows shot up.  “The glory?  Excuse me, have you even heard of the Red Sox?”

“Just that they couldn’t figure their shit out for eighty years.”

“They broke the curse. That’s all that matters.  Nothing you can say about the Vikings or about football will change that fact.”

“The Vikings matter more than all of baseball,” he said.  He’d had enough arguments with Robert about this to know he was right.  Robert, who had spent his youth profoundly ignoring the Bay Area’s two perfectly good football teams…at least Boston had the Patriots.

To his credit, it didn’t devolve into an argument.  He was not so rude as to shove Catelyn’s wrongness into her face, and he was quite pleased with how politely he was able to explain to her just how wrong she was about football, and that it represented as much the American spirit as baseball, and did so better, as a matter of fact.

And when they had finished their lunch, he had noticed just how brilliantly blue her eyes were, even when she was glaring at him in mild annoyance, and how her whole face came alive as she spoke and for more than one wild moment, he wondered what would have happened if Brandon had never dated her at all.

* * *

 

It was oddly distracting to have Cat sit next to him.  She usually sat behind him, and faded into the mix of faces at his back.  She shifted a lot when she sat, crossing her legs and uncrossing them, leaning first to one side, then to the other, shifting her auburn braid so it rested at her back, then over her shoulder, then over her other shoulder, then at her back again.  And every little movement, every little sound—her skirt rustling, her breath, caught his attention, and made it wholly difficult to listen to the interrogation of Robett Glover, the police officer who had first followed up on a complaint filed by a neighbor. 

When the court broke for lunch, he and Cat ordered sandwiches from a deli, and settled down in the little park a block away from the courthouse where he had first watched her eating lunch.  Not  _watched_ her watched her.  That sounded creepy.  She'd been there, and he’d been there, and she’d been reading, and he'd just sort of…rested his eyes on her while he thought about things.

“So what do they even have you doing during your internship?” she asked, “Or rather, what would they have you doing—if you were there?”

“Basic stuff.  Some stuff in CAD.”  She looked at him blankly.   “It’s the software program for designing stuff,” he said as an explanation.  “Like, they have me work on some smaller projects—home renovations and the like that don't require a full team.  I  _might_  be allowed to help out with some of the big projects, but I don’t think that’ll end up happening this summer.”

“Why not?” Cat asked.  She had just taken a bite out of her sandwich and had lifted her hand to her lips to cover her mouth as she asked the question, bobbing her head in a half apology at her rudeness.

“I don’t know how long this’ll go on.  So I don’t think they’ll add projects to my portfolio until I can be sure to finish up the ones they had me start.”  He thought about how he had hoped at the start of the summer to help with the window design for 580 Park, or the building they were designing for Asshai Travel's new New York office.

“Maybe the case won't go on too long,” she suggested.  “Maybe it will be over faster than you think.”

Ned smiled at her.  It was a kind thing for her to say.  “Maybe,” he agreed.  “But it's hard to say.  I've heard of cases like this one going on twice as long as they say they will.”  Something about that thought made him suddenly happy.  He shouldn’t be happy.  He was missing valuable time working, gaining experience, and it was so hard to find a job as an architect, even with a master’s degree.  But he imagined many more lunches like this one, sitting in the too-humid summer afternoon with Cat, watching as she smiled at him and chewed on her sandwich and he couldn’t help but feel as though it weren’t a wholly wasted use of his time.

“What made you want to go into architecture?” she asked.  She hadn't taken a huge bite of her sandwich this time, and he noticed a bit of lettuce stuck between her teeth.

“You have a bit of…” he said, pointing to his own teeth and she blushed, and he saw the bulge of her tongue under her lips as she swiped it over her teeth.  Then she grinned at him nervously.

“Gone?”

“Yep.”

“So—architecture?  Brandon always made it sound like you wanted to do politics?”

Ned smiled wryly.  “Yeah…It wasn't for me.  Not my temperament, really.  Too much…I don’t know, to do things, you kind of had to…” he tried not to sound bitter.  He had really loved his internship down in DC after his freshman year, but it had ended not so well…  “It's not an honest thing.  You know?  Like governing is hard—and it should be.  But governing and politicking aren't the same thing.  I like the governing.  I don't like the politicking that you need to get to the governing.  So…I took a step back from it, and took a design course, and…well…here we are.”

She smiled.  “The infamous sophomore major change.”

“You got me,” he grinned.  “It's nice.  I like it.  It’s a lot of different elements all working together.  Creativity, teamwork, building something for the future…you know?”

She smiled at him.  “Makes perfect sense to me.”

There was something about her smile—something kind, and supportive.  He had no doubt that she made a great teacher.

* * *

 

“Chinatown?” he asked her when he arrived and settled in his seat.

“Only always,” she grinned.

“Great,” he smiled.  Behind her, she heard Chataya lean over and whisper something to Nymeria.  She couldn't quite tell what it was, but she could have  _sworn_  the word “dating”.  Nymeria chuckled in response.

The court hadn't been in session yesterday, and Cat had spent the Wednesday lazily.  She had streamed half a season of  _Friends_  and cleaned her room and read a few articles that her principal sent the entire staff about developing minds through touch.  It had been a boring article, and she hadn’t learned anything she didn't already know, but she read it anyway.  Aemon was old, and kind, and could get very peeved if you didn't read what he suggested you read.

“How was your internship yesterday?” she asked as she set her menu down.

“Fine.  I'm super behind, but they understand.  I really should go in after I'm done on the jury, but…” he cut himself off and blushed a little. 

“But what?” she asked.

“I like riding the train with you,” he mumbled, looking down at his mug of tea.

Cat felt her lips smile almost of their own volition.  “I like riding the train with you as well,” she said quietly, and she saw him smile as well.

It was true.  They had laughed their whole way uptown two days before, as he told her stories about his friend Jory’s catastrophic final project, and about how no one seemed to know how to use the printers because the printers seemed to have minds of their own.  Why such things were amusing, she had no idea.  Maybe because Ned was the one saying them.

“Can you do any of the work from home?” she asked.

“I’ve been trying to,” Ned said, his tone suddenly serious, as though he were trying to impress upon her how responsible he was.  “I put in a good three or so hours when I get home.  It's not enough, but it helps.” 

“Do architects often work from home?” she asked.

“No, not really.  I mean, I have CAD on my computer, but a lot of the stuff I need is on the servers at work.  But I do my best.”  He took a sip of his tea.  “I suppose you do a fair amount of work from home, then?  Teachers do, yeah?”

“Not as much as you'd think,” she said.  “I mean, I'm sure high school teachers do, but I don’t.  I'm mostly in the classroom.  I don't have homework to grade or anything.  Though, I do require a tremendous amount of recovery time when I get out.”  She made a face.  It was exhausting, having that much energy for small children for that many hours in the day.  She couldn't fathom doing it without the aid of coffee, but even with caffeine, she found herself wholly drained at the end of a school day, hardly able to do more than lie down and watch hours of television when she got back home.

“They’re troublemakers?” Ned asked.  There was something almost wistful in his eyes.

“Not universally,” Cat said, “But they're…well…children require a lot of energy, because they have a lot of energy.  And I adore them—I truly do,” she frowned.  It was hard to explain, but Ned sat there across from her, watching her patiently, and so she tried, “I see too many people go into teaching for the wrong reasons, and I've had too many colleagues who don’t really know how to deal with little children, even though it’s their job.  And worse—parents who don't understand childhood development.  And so all those things are very draining, because at the end of the day—I just want to spend time with them, you know?”

“But there’s a lot you have to push through in order to do that,” said Ned.

“Precisely.  And I don’t like that.  Not very much.”

“Do you want kids of your own?”  She gaped at him.  What sort of a question was  _that_?  Who asked that sort of—well, they weren't dating, she reminded herself.  They weren't.  And that’s a perfectly normal thing to ask an acquaintance, especially if you're talking about their job working with small children.

“Yes,” she said quietly.  “Yes, I think I do.  I mean—if I find the right man, and everything.”

 Ned was nodding, an encouraging smile on his face. 

“Do you?  Want kids?” she asked.

His face seemed to light up as he nodded. “Yeah,” he said, almost as excited as Willas had been when she’d told the class that there were new paintbrushes last spring. “I want kids.  You know, also with the right woman and all that.  It’s another reason I decided I didn't want to do politics.  That's not a family job, you know?  Architecture though…you can have kids and be an architect.” 

He was smiling at her and was she supposed to nod?  Was she supposed to say that he'd chosen well?  Because she wasn't sure she could because suddenly all she could think of was Brandon laughing and saying for the life of him he didn't understand why people actually wanted to procreate.   God, they were just so…just so different.  It was almost impossible to believe.  She and Lysa had never been so different, but Ned and Brandon…nothing seemed to line up.

* * *

 

She had been in a good mood the entire afternoon, and had argued with Ned about baseball all the way until 86th Street.  He had been gentlemanly in his replies, never getting overheated, but never giving an inch, no matter how determined she was to make him see the error of his ways and start liking baseball.  He could at _least_ like the Minnesota Twins without thinking it was base treachery, even though obviously that was a much less satisfying franchise than the Red Sox. 

Catelyn let herself feel content as she curled up on her bed and opened up her Netflix account to see what she would watch before bed that night.

Which was when Lysa called her in tears.

She didn’t really understand half of the words coming out of Lysa’s mouth, and the conversation didn’t last more than five minutes, but by the end of it, she’d gotten enough to know that this…this wasn’t Lysa being Lysa. 

She called her father, who ranted to her for forty-five minutes about trust and betrayal and sheer dumb idiocy.  She called her uncle, who told her she was lucky not to be at home right now.  She called Edmure, who didn’t pick up and probably didn’t even know what was going on, but she wanted to hear his voice so she tried anyway.

She didn’t call Petyr, and he didn’t call her, and when she did finally turn her phone off and curl up in her bed, she couldn’t sleep, and spent most of the night tossing and turning and staring up at the ceiling, wishing she couldn’t imagine Lysa sobbing quite so clearly as she did.

* * *

 

“Are you all right?”

They were standing in the dim yellow light the platform, waiting for the 1 back uptown and he was looking at her with concern in his big grey eyes. 

“Hm? Oh.  Yes,” she said, in a way that she was absolutely sure conveyed the exact opposite. 

“Oh.  Right.”  He shifted slightly so that he was facing her more directly than he had been before, and she knew that he didn’t believe her.  But he didn’t press, he didn’t presume, he didn’t… _He doesn’t think he has the right to ask_ , she thought in wonder, even though they had had a lovely lunch date just the day before.  Brandon would have.  He would have laughed and told her that yeah, sure he believed that in the driest tone imaginable and she would have sighed and told him.  But Ned…

Ned was warm—warmer than Brandon ever had been—Brandon who ran hot and then cold, while Ned seemed consistent.  He was gentle and didn’t push at all.  And if anything…that made her want to tell him, if only to see…he never reacted the way that Brandon reacted, but maybe in this he would.

“My sister just had an abortion,” she said quietly, and Ned blinked at her twice and an expression of the deepest discomfort crossed his face.  He opened his mouth to respond right as the 1 pulled into the station.  They got onto the train, him sitting on a yellow seat, and her sitting corner to him in an orange one.  The car was empty and Cat realized too late that it was not air conditioned. 

“I’m…I’m sorry to hear that,” Ned said at last, shifting forward, resting his elbows on his knees so that his face was nearer hers and they could talk quietly, even though the car was empty.  “Is…is she all right?”

Catelyn blinked at him.  She had been bracing herself for the worst—the “oh my god, why?” that Brandon would have sputtered—if he’d said anything, that is—or, worse, the darkened expression of someone who thought that abortions were sinful, wrong, unethical—the works.  But instead, he’d asked the one question she wasn’t expecting—the one that mattered most.

“She’s distraught,” Catelyn sighed, watching as he bobbed his head, still looking distinctly uncomfortable.  “She’s…not sure it was the right decision, even if—well, my dad and uncle obviously do.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“Me?” Cat asked.

He nodded and she stared at him.  Maybe because she’d heard it from Lysa first, or maybe because she was so far away from all of them, but she hadn’t let herself think about it the night before.  She couldn’t have brought herself to agree with her father with Lysa’s tears so fresh in her mind, but at the same time…Lysa was in no way prepared to raise a child.  She had no idea what that even meant.  “I think…yes.  I think it was a good idea.  I mean—sad.  And hard.  And I _really_ wish it was a choice that she didn’t have to make, but…”

“That’s hard,” he said, “Your sister being of one mind and you being just one more in the chorus of people who think something different.”

Cat grimaced.  “She’s got her head in the clouds a lot of the time.  And she thought…well, it doesn’t matter.”  She waited for Ned to push.  He didn’t.  Because of that—because he just looked at her steadily, like she could tell if she wanted or not if she didn’t—she decided she wanted to. “Well, yes it does.  She thought it would make him love her—to have his kid.  And I don’t even want to _think_ about what she was thinking jumping into bed with him.  He…he was never after her.”  No, he had never been after Lysa.  And she’d been glad when Petyr hadn’t gone to school in New York as he had wanted to, and she’d been glad when he had decided to go down to DC to find a job because it was the hardest thing in the world, telling Petyr over and over again that he just wasn’t…just wasn’t her type.

Ned was silent for a moment, and she almost sighed.  He just wanted her to shut up, she supposed.  Why was it that he and Brandon didn’t care about things that mattered?  They cared about baseball versus football, but the second she brought up something real in her life…Brandon had only laughed when she’d told him to be kind to Petyr because he was sensitive and a little in love with her, and then he’d broken Petyr’s nose.  Maybe she should have broken up with him then.  Maybe she should have seen then that he was just a—

“It’s amazing what lengths people will go to to try and make someone love them,” Ned said.

Catelyn gaped at him, then realized she was gaping and closed her mouth. 

“Yeah,” she said.  “Yeah, it is.”

“It’s not in any way the same, but…well…my sister,” Lyanna.  Her name was Lyanna and Brandon had called her his mini-me and had showed Cat pictures of her facebook on his phone.  “She…she had a falling out with my roommate.  And he’s just determined to get her back.  And she won’t have him.  It’s not the same, but he…I don’t think he sees the matter clearly.  And he certainly won’t listen to any advice about it.”

“Lysa’s the same about Petyr,” she said quietly, her heart pounding in her throat and she didn’t know why.  “Exactly the same.”  She looked at Ned who was nodding and looking nervous, as though he wasn’t sure he had said the right thing.  Why was he always so nervous?  And for the briefest, wildest moment, she thought of Lysa, never sure if she was saying the right thing, but always trying because Cat always managed to, and if Cat always managed to, then reason dictated that Lysa could to, and yet Lysa was never sure…Was that what Ned was like with Brandon?

“And it’s hard because on the one hand, I want to be involved.  I care about them both, obviously. But…I shouldn’t be.  I have no place to be.  Because they’re both adults and can figure it out for themselves.  But all the same, Lyanna won’t talk to me so long as I live with Robert, and Robert keeps asking me if I hear from Lyanna, and it’s…it’s hard to extricate myself from that knot.   I don’t know…it’s not the same.  I don’t know why I said it.”

“No, but it’s true,” Cat said, and she was seized with the impulse to grab his hand, his arm, his shoulder and comfort him but also thank him because this—this conversation was what she needed.  What he was saying was helping.  “I love Lysa.  I love her so much.  And Petyr is like a little brother to me, but he’s always…well…” she glanced down at her hands, “always sort of been in love with me.  Brandon once broke his nose over it.”  She glanced at Ned to see if there was any recognition in his face about that story.  There wasn’t.  She plowed on.  “I can’t…I can’t make them be better.  I can’t make them sort out their problems, or see the world one way or another.  It’s…”

“It’s neither your responsibility nor what you want,” Ned said simply. 

Catelyn didn’t say anything, she just breathed in and out and looked at him and maybe it was because the subway car was so hot that she was all too aware of the way her clothes were sticking to her skin, or maybe it was because they were alone, or maybe it was because his eyes somehow _didn’t_ look like Brandon’s, even though they were the same color, and shape, and were part of a face that looked so very similar but…

“I need to stop comparing you to Brandon,” she blurted out.  Ned winced and looked away from her, out the window of the subway car as if checking what station they were on, even though they were in the tunnel and not in a station at all.

“You can…you can do what you like.”  He was still looking out the window and not at her, and she shouldn’t have said it, but that ship had sailed so she might as well keep trying.

“What I mean,” she said quickly, “is that…” but what could she say?  That every time I expect you to be like Brandon, you’re better?  Kinder?  Gentler?  She couldn’t say that to him about his brother.  That was like when Petyr had gotten drunk and told her that Lysa would never be as wonderful as she was.  “It’s not fair to either of you.  Because you’re different.  And the comparison isn’t fair and doesn’t ultimately let me recognize you for you?”  She hadn’t meant to end it as a question, to sound timid and nervous, but they were pulling into 72nd Street and she only had two more stops to make it right and that was hardly any time at all.

His eyes snapped back to hers and she saw his nostrils flaring as he breathed deeply.   He opened his mouth once, but then closed.  He did it again. On the third try, words came out.  “I wouldn’t begrudge you comparing us.  You…you’ve known Brandon longer.”  It sounded like he had never uttered harder words in his life.  He must be compared to his brother all the time.  He must constantly wonder if someone is sizing him up to Brandon, and here she was, doing just that.  It strengthened Catelyn’s resolve.

“That hardly matters,” she said. _I like you better_ , she wanted to say, but she couldn’t say that, because was that even true?  She hardly knew Ned.  And even if she did say it, it wouldn’t necessarily be the right thing to say.  “It’s not fair.  And I should stop.”  This time, she did reach out her hand to touch his arm, her fingers barely ghosting over her wrist.

Warmth flooded her and she stared at Ned because how can half a fingertip on a wrist make you suddenly feel warm?  How can several conversations and constantly wondering if this man is the same stock as your ex make for a…no, it had to just be because the subway was un-airconditioned.  That was the only explanation. 

Ned’s eyes had dropped to her fingers and then he jerked his gaze back up and stared at her, his eyes wide.  _He felt that too.  I know he did_.

She almost missed her stop, staring into his eyes. She jumped to her feet and hurried out of the car, and she hadn’t realized just how hot the subway car had been until the underground heat from the 86th Street stop was cooler.  And, as the cooler air washed over her, she realized she hadn’t said goodbye, and turned to do so right as the car doors closed in her face. 

She saw Ned staring at her, his eyes completely unreadable as the 1 took him further uptown.


	3. Chapter 3

_Because you’re different.  And the comparison isn’t fair and doesn’t ultimately let me recognize you for you._   What had that even meant?  He hadn’t been surprised that she’d compared him to Brandon.  Everyone did, and he would have done the same thing in her shoes, but…what did she mean?

He had spent all evening wondering about it, ignoring Robert’s attempts to get him out of the apartment, ignoring texts from Jory and Howland who wanted to see the new Marvel movie.  And when he arrived downtown and joined the other eleven in the jury box, he found that Catelyn was sitting directly behind him today and he could feel her eyes on the back of his head.

What had she meant?  Did she mean that it wasn’t a fair comparison because she was chocking up all of Brandon’s virtues to him?  And that she was disappointed because he wasn’t as lively a chat?  It wouldn’t be the first time, that was for sure.  He’d gotten that a lot, especially when Brandon had told him to look up his college friends when he’d gotten into Columbia. Or did she mean that he was better than Brandon, somehow, inexplicably?  But that couldn’t be true.  No one liked him more than Brandon.  No one—no one except Robert, anyway.  It just didn’t happen.  Brandon was loud and fun and he was quieter, shorter, more nervous, and less intelligent.  So which was it? Or maybe it was a third that he couldn’t think of, or even a twentieth that he couldn’t think of because she hadn’t explained it and had just run out of the subway car after she’d touched his wrist.

He should have said something, should have said anything, but what could he have said?  What could he have asked?  What could he have…he was too hot, and he got all fuddled when he was overheated and then she’d gone and touched his wrist and it had been like a breath of fresh air in that stagnant subway car, like a breeze creeping across his whole body while he’d looked into her eyes and noticed just how blue they were, like Lake Whitewood near home where he and Lyanna and Brandon and Benjen used to go skinny dipping past midnight on the hottest summer days because Lyanna and Brandon weren’t exactly the type of people you could deter from skinny dipping.  Catelyn’s eyes were like pools of home and who even thought like that?  That was weird.  _Especially_ about Brandon’s ex.  You don’t think that about your brother’s ex.  You just don’t.  That was base treachery, no matter what Robert said.  Or perhaps _because_ Robert said it, because Robert wasn’t exactly the type to understand.  Robert didn’t have the same relationship with his brothers. 

Her eyes had widened when she’d touched his wrist.  There had been a flush on her neck, though maybe that was because it was so damn hot in that damned subway car.  And she needed to stop comparing him to Brandon.

Judge Arryn gaveled the court into session, and Ned shook himself as the defense called Jeor Mormont to the stand.

* * *

 

“Hey bro.  What’s up?”  He heard the sound of wind through the phone and knew that Brandon was driving.  Ned glanced at his window and shuddered at the thought of opening it.  He had stripped off his shirt and pants and was lying flat on his bed in an undershirt and boxers.  A nearly silent subway ride uptown with Cat had left him feeling so…he didn’t know.  Confused, that he didn’t know what else to do.  He would have had to call Brandon at some point, of that he was sure.  So why not now?  Get it out of the way.

“I’m on a jury with Catelyn Tully,” he said.  There was no point hiding it. 

“Ah.”  Brandon said.  It was the shortest syllable in the world when Brandon said it.  No dragging it out.  No nothing.  Brisk and to the point, so unlike Brandon.  “How is she?”

“She’s good.  She’s nice.  She’s a kindergarten teacher.”  She’s still mad at you, she’s got eyes that remind me of home, she needs to stop comparing me to you.

“She would pick something wholesome,” said Brandon.  “That’s why we didn’t work out.”  No, you didn’t work out because you couldn’t keep it in your pants, Brandon.  “Well, tell her I say hello.  The case interesting?”

“Decently,” Ned said. 

“What’s going on in it?”

“I am not allowed to say.  Legally bound.”

“Right,” Brandon said.  “So…you’re just calling about Cat.  What, you want my permission or something?”  He barked a laugh.

“What?  No.  I just…I just wanted to let you know.  In case you…” wanted to apologize?

“Whatever.  It doesn’t matter.  Cat’s done with me and I’m done with her.  There’s no point dragging it around. Unless you were asking my permission, which, Ned, let me just say, is first of all ridiculous and second of all stupid.”

It’s not though, Ned wanted to say, it’s more important than anything.  But why was he worrying about that?  Why was he even thinking about that?  She didn’t want to compare him to Brandon.  That didn’t mean she wanted to…

He thought about Cat smiling at him, a knowing smile, a gentle smile, a loving smile and his imagination threw in that blush creeping up her neck and he felt his dick twitch.  Traitor.

“How’s Lyanna?” Ned asked because he needed to not think about things that would make his dick twitch.

“She’s fine.  Still not talking to you?” Brandon asked.

“She’s made it pretty clear that so long as I’m living with Robert, she’s not saying two words to me,” Ned sighed, rolling over to lie on his stomach. 

“She’s stubborn like that. Hell, it runs in the family.  Starks are stubborn as shit.”

“I’d noticed,” Ned said dryly, and Brandon chuckled. 

“Well, she’s finishing up.  I’d say she smokes too much pot, but that would be hypocritical of me, I suppose.  She’s also screwing a married man, so you can get off your high horse about how Cat and I broke up and get on one about Lyanna.”

“I—she—what?”

Brandon was laughing again.  “She’s young.  Let her make her own mistakes.”

“A _married man_?”

“Yep.  She says the sex is boring, but he’s a good musician, so there we are.  I personally wouldn’t bang a bad lay for good music, but Ly does what Ly does.”

“Brandon—you can’t think this is all right, though!” Ned yelped.

“I don’t really.  But it’s not going to last.  And she’s legal.  And I’m in California.  What am I supposed to do about it?  Ride over on a white horse and threaten him with death for touching my sister?  Come on now, Ned.  We don’t live in the twelfth century.”

“Lyanna…” Ned moaned, striking his palm against his forehead. 

“I knew this was a good tactic for making you not pissed at me on behalf of Cat Tully.”

“I’m not on a high horse,” snapped Ned.  “You _did_ mistreat her, though.”

“Look, people are idiots.  Myself included.  And Cat wasn’t for me, and I wasn’t for her.  So I took matters into my own hands.  It’s for the best, ok?  I’m happier, she’s probably happier.  I’m not ashamed of what I did.  You’ll notice me and Barb are still together.”  _You hurt her_ , Ned thought.  _You hurt her, you made her angry and upset and now she needs to stop comparing me to you._

They were silent for a moment and Ned thought he heard the rev of Brandon’s engine and wondered idly just how fast he was driving.  Brandon and Lyanna had always made fun of him for driving slow, but he wasn’t such an idiot that he would go ninety on a highway just because he could.  “Look, I need to go.  I’m getting a call from Barb and she’s probably going to get me to pick some shit up on my way home.  Talk to you soon, ok?”

“Yep.”

And the call ended.  Ned let his phone fall from his hand and pressed his face into the blankets of his bed.  He was cooler now and the air conditioning was blowing right across his butt, which felt nice. 

Why was Brandon such an ass?  Why didn’t Brandon understand that there was a way to treat people, and a way to be in the world, and a way to…Cat said she needed to stop comparing him to Brandon.  Maybe he needed to do that too.

He sighed and flipped over again, letting the air conditioning blow up the leg of his boxers for a moment, before he shivered and decided that, as much as he liked the cold, even that was too much for his dick.  He scooted slightly down the bed and stared up at his ceiling. 

It was blue-ish in the evening light, and why was it that all things blue made him think of Cat now?  Why was that?  That was hardly helpful.  Blue was one of those unavoidable colors, and if every single time he saw it it made him think of her eyes and of swimming at home and—

He groaned.  He hated his brain sometimes, he really and truly did, because it supplying images of Cat skinny dipping with him under the stars was just about the least helpful thing it had done all evening.  It wasn’t even a defined image.  He didn’t see her breasts, or even her ass, so much as the curve of pale flesh between her shoulder and her hip as she leapt off the dock and oh shit this was such a bad image to let into his head, this was so terrible and he shouldn’t think about this at all, he was going to see her again tomorrow and she’d be wearing something neat and pretty, a skirt that swayed as she walked and a set of heels that made her pale calves elongate and her breasts stick out and oh god he hated his brain, and he hated his hand which was now running up and down his shaft. 

He knew better than to be surprised that his dick was hard already. It had stopped being an ally years ago when Brandon had brought home Ashara Dayne and he’d been hardly able to contain himself.  And here it was again, delighting in someone Brandon had gotten to first, cajoling his mind and hand into providing him with new images to think of—Cat sitting in the subway, leaning forward, completely unaware of the way her breasts pushed together when she did and oh god, he wondered what color her nipples were.  Robert always said that nipples and lips were the same color, and Cat’s lips were such a soft red. Maybe she wore lipstick—maybe they were more pink and the tips of her breasts were a softer pink, soft like a flower petal, but puckering as he reached to touch them, puckering because she wanted him to touch them, puckering because his hands were chilly, and that chill was something new, something shocking, and she was gasping his name, shocked that he would touch her breast because Ned wasn’t the type to touch someone’s breasts, except in his fantasies while his hand stroked up and down his dick. 

He felt a bead of liquid at the tip and he rolled his fingers over it, smiling at the jolt it sent through him.  He imagined that that liquid came from Cat, from her—oh god—from her tongue as she knelt over him on his bed, that teasing look that she’d gotten while making fun of the Superbowl on her face as her tongue darted out from between those perfect pink lips and circled the head of his—oh god.

Everything was hot now, despite the strength of the air conditioner, and he suppressed a moan as his dick throbbed in his hand and hot spurts of cum shot up his stomach and chest.   The air around him was cool in his throat, even his pulse seemed cool as he came, but his skin was on fire, his mind, his hand…everything was hot and hot made him think of Cat and that made everything better, everything worse.  He lay there, letting the image of Cat’s smile faded from his mind because oh god—he’d just…he’d…oh god.  He sat up and peeled off his undershirt, making sure he’d mopped himself up properly with it before throwing it into the hamper, and closed his eyes because if he looked at the ceiling, it would be blue like skinny-dipping and like Cat’s eyes and this would all start all over again.

* * *

 

Ned wouldn’t look at her all day, and Cat wondered what she could have possibly done wrong.  He was silent again on the subway uptown and he had practically bolted out of the courtroom during lunch before she’d even had a chance to ask him if he wanted to get a meal together.  She had taken to not packing lunch to bring down with her because she had noticed that Ned never brought his own and she found that she liked getting lunch with him.  But he’d disappeared down the stairs, not even waiting for the elevator with he and the rest, and she’d ended up eating with Gerion Lannister and Arthur Dayne, both of whom were thoroughly charming and easy to talk to, and neither of whom had grey eyes that gave away so much more than their words.

Maybe she shouldn’t have brought up Brandon at all, but all of Ned’s reticence had begun the day after she’d brought it up to begin with and now he was…

It stung a bit.  No, not a bit.  A lot.  Brandon was the one to blow hot and then cold—not Ned.  And god damn it, she wasn’t supposed to be comparing them, but when he did things like this…It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair at all.  He was supposed to be nice and gentle and caring and good and now he wouldn’t look at her.  What the hell was she supposed to make of that?

Her phone rang, and she saw Lysa’s picture flashing across her screen.  It was a happy picture of Lysa, one from their trip to the Cape several years back, when she’d been in college still and they’d snuck out onto the beach past midnight and gone swimming and she’d done her best to ignore the way that Petyr stared at her breasts as they bobbed on the surface of the water.  She’d never thought she would think of Lysa’s…Lysa’s situation as a distraction but there it was.

“Hello darling,” she said.

“Hi,” Lysa said glumly.

“What’s going on?” Cat asked, lying down on her bed and opening the window, letting the early evening breeze play across her skin.

“Petyr won’t talk to me,” Lysa said.  She sounded past tears, and Catelyn wished she could jump through the phone and curl herself around her sister.  “He won’t pick up his phone, he won’t text me back, or email me, or…I don’t know.  Maybe this was all a good idea in the end.  Getting rid of…of…”

And there they were, the tears she’d been expecting.  She heard Lysa’s breath quivering.

“Why doesn’t he love me, Cat?  He said he did.  He said he did loads, but now he won’t even reply to my messages.  You…you don’t think dad scared him off, do you?”  Cat wouldn’t have put it past her father, but she also refused point blank to entertain that thought.  Ned was right, after a fashion. _It’s amazing what lengths people will go to to try and make someone love them._ It had never been Lysa’s breasts that Petyr had stared at.  She felt a cold fury fill her, anger unlike anything she’d felt at all towards Ned.  Hell, Ned probably was being noble or something in his refusing to look at her. He probably thought he was being disloyal to Brandon, or something.  But Petyr…

“I don’t know, darling,” she said, keeping her fury out of her voice, sounding as gentle as she remembered their mother sounding when Cat had gone to her sobbing over a skinned knee.  “Boys are very stupid.”

“Not Petyr, though.  He’s _smart_.  He’s going to go far.”  Lysa hiccupped and sobbed again. 

 _Far away from you, I hope_ , Cat thought viciously.  Instead, she said, “Maybe, darling.  But he’s treating you very poorly right now.  And that’s not a good thing.  He’s ignoring you and this is an important thing in your life and…” What else could she say?

“I know,” Lysa sighed.  “It hurts.  It hurts a lot.”

She didn’t know how long Lysa cried on the phone to her.  She didn’t need to say more than “Uh huh,” and “I know, darling.  I know,” which was good, because she didn’t know what to say at all.  So she just lay there, providing what comfort she could from afar.

* * *

 

“Are you all right?” She had to ask him—she had to.  Because this was the third day in a row like this, sitting in the same yellow and orange and steel subway car, not talking, and it was making her crazy, and she was tired because she hadn’t slept well at all the night before.  She hadn’t been able to get Lysa’s tears out of her head.

“I’m fine,” Ned said.  His tone was clipped and reminded her of Brandon’s when he’d— _no_ , she wasn’t doing that, she’d promised herself, promised him.  God, she wondered if she were worthless sometimes. 

She was ready to let it go again—he clearly didn’t want to talk to her—when Ned sighed.  “No.  I’m not fine.  Lyanna’s sleeping with a married man and she won’t answer my calls about it.”

“She’s—” Cat bit her lip and looked down at her hands.

“Yeah,” Ned said.  “Lyanna’s always been a bit wild.  But still…I mean…She should…she should know better than that.  And Brandon won’t call her on it.  Says we’re not in the twelfth century and she can do as she likes.  He says hi, by the way.”

Cat jerked her head up and stared at Ned.  He looked annoyed, and she wondered if it was at her or at Brandon and she hoped, selfishly, she knew, that it was at Brandon. 

“Oh,” she said.  “I…” she looked away.  “It’s hard when little sisters won’t listen to you.  Lysa…even if I were to tell her that she is really better off that Petyr isn’t calling her, or messaging her, she won’t believe me.  She would think my perspective is skewed.” She wondered if she would make it worse without saying anything about Brandon.  She didn’t want to think about Brandon. 

If he had noted it, he didn’t say anything about it at all.  “Even if Lyanna picked up my calls, she wouldn’t want to listen to a word I said.” 

“Wouldn’t?  Or wouldn’t let on that she did?” Cat asked.  Ned smiled wryly.

“Knowing Lyanna, it could be either.”

“Edmure’s the same.  Lysa…less so.”

“How is Lysa?”  Her heart twisted in her chest—that he had asked, that he cared enough to ask.

“Not good.  She’s still very upset.”  He was nodding, as though he couldn’t imagine it any other way, and Cat could have kissed him because she hadn’t realized how much him sitting there, listening, caring, mattered to her, calmed her, made her feel like she wasn’t alone and far away and detached from everything.  “Dad thinks she should come down and visit me for a while, but…I don’t know.  I don’t know if that would be helpful.”

“Why not?”

 _Because Petyr was always in love with me and not her_.  “I…I don’t think it would…it’s complicated.”  She glanced out the window.  They were at 79 th Street.  Part of her wanted to hide it forever from him.  Part of her wanted not to share this bit, because this was too personal, and she wasn’t the type to share this sort of thing.  But on the other hand, she’d found that sharing things with Ned…sharing things with Ned never let her down.

“Do you want to come upstairs for a moment?” she asked as the train pulled into 86th Street.  “I…I could explain.  And we could have tea.”  God, she sounded pathetic.  She sounded so pathetic, like she was trying to make him care about her life.

He paused, like he was thinking it over, then, “That sounds nice,” he said, standing up with her and they disembarked together. 

Ten minutes later, they were sitting in her apartment, and she had put a kettle on to boil.  Ned was sitting at her kitchen table, looking around.

“This is a good building,” he said.

“Hm?”

“It’s good.  It’s sturdy.  Was it recently renovated?”

“I…don’t know,” she said.

“I think it must have been.”  He pointed to a spot of wall next to her refrigerator.  “That plaster is new.  I think they extended the wall.”

“Can you…can you tell that?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” he shrugged.  “It’s fun when I see it.  You can’t always tell.  But sometimes you can.”

She smiled.  “New York must be full of fun architecture.”

And he grinned.  “Fun.  Ugly.  Amazing.  Horrible.  The works.”

The kettle whistled and she poured them each a mug.  Then she sat down and silence stretched.  She knew he was waiting, and if anything that made it that much harder to start.  Because what would he think of her at the end of it all?

“So, Lysa…no.  That’s not where to begin.  It begins with my dad, I guess.  He took in one of his friend’s kids.  This friend died pretty early on, and dad felt responsible for making him…I don’t know.  Making sure his life was ok.  So Petyr lived with us, and went to good schools with us and was like a little brother to me.”

“How old is he?” Ned asked.

“He’s Lysa’s age.  A little younger than me, but not as young as Edmure.  Right in the middle.  And yeah…I grew up with him.  He was there starting when I was like twelve, and he was home during college breaks, and he came home at his college breaks.”

“And Lysa fell in love.”

She nodded. “Lysa’s been in love with him from the beginning, I think.  She might read too many romance novels about the kid next door, you know?  In any case…she and Petyr always got on well.  Petyr got on well with everyone.  And…”

“He didn’t love her back.”

Catelyn shook her head. She could just leave it there, it would be easy—so easy.  Leave it there, keep herself out of it.  But then he wouldn’t understand why Lysa shouldn’t come.  “He was in love with me.  Still is, I think.”

“Ah.”

“So, when he’s not calling Lysa now, I think…I think it wouldn’t be helpful for her to come visit me.  I think it might make everything worse.”

“Does she know that he’s in love with you?”

“I think so.  I think she guesses, if she doesn’t know it explicitly.  I think it hurts her a lot.”

Ned frowned and took a sip of tea.  “Ow.”

“Too hot?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want an ice cube?” she got to her feet and was already moving towards the fridge.

“Yes please.”

She handed him two and he put one in his tea and the other into his mouth.

“So, Lysa coming here would be hard because she’d see you and wonder why Petyr doesn’t love her.”

“Exactly.  And she’d get mad at me, at him, at herself.  I don’t know.  But it wouldn’t help anything.  Especially because ultimately, it’s not my fault.  You know?  I never asked Petyr to be in love with me.  But he is.  And…and I’m not interested in him at all.  But still, that’s not something that’s easy to show Lysa.  So space.  And time.”

“Space.  And time,” Ned murmured, his mouth full of ice, distorting the words and making Cat smile.  He began chewing on the ice, breaking it up between his teeth, a thoughtful expression on his face.

* * *

 

He had stayed through dinner, and she’d made him watch part of the Yankee-Red Sox game with her, even though he complained that it was boring and that east coasters wouldn’t know real sports if you hit them in the head with a baseball bat.  Cat had replied cheerily that clearly he hadn’t been wearing his helmet while playing football because his judgment was off.

He’d helped her clean up after dinner and had left with a smile and a “see you tomorrow” and when he was gone, Cat was aware of how empty the apartment was.  It was small, and she liked living by herself, and was grateful for her father’s money that let her do it, but it had been a while since she’d had someone over and without Ned to take up the space, suddenly it all felt too big for just her. 

Maybe she’d have him over more often, she thought as she stepped into the shower, letting warm water wash away the sweat of the summer’s day.  She’d turned on the air conditioner for Ned, but she still felt gross from the subway.  Maybe she’d have him over, and she’d make him like baseball, and he’d make her feel as though she wasn’t ruining everything for Lysa just by existing.  Maybe they’d fall into an easy friendship and they’d go to the park and read and laugh and look at tiny dogs.  She’d take him to more good Chinese food places in Chinatown and he’d try and make her understand football and when the school year got started again, they’d get dinner every now and then and think about how good it was that they were able to be friends despite Brandon.

She didn’t know a lot of restaurants up near Columbia.  She’d heard they were good, and fairly cheap, but she never felt like taking the subway up, especially not when there were so many good places on Columbus right near her.  But for Ned, she’d go uptown, especially if he were too tired or stressed from his architecture courses to leave campus. Maybe he’d cook for her—if he cooked—or at least have her come over for pizza and they’d watch a football game because it was only fair, or they’d go into his room and watch a movie and…and not watch a movie.

Suddenly the water from the shower felt very cold and she turned up the warmth, imagining that her hands, as she rubbed soap over her breasts and stomach, were Ned’s.  Ned’s hands were bigger than hers, she’d noticed that while he had been drinking his tea, but if she was going to have naughty shower imaginings, she could at least pretend.  She pinched her nipples and sighed, closing her eyes and seeing Ned’s grey eyes, nervous, not sure that she wanted him to touch her at all and she let herself moan and the nervousness disappeared, replaced by wonderment, pleasure as he squeezed again and she felt a tremor shoot from her nipples to her lips. 

“Kiss me.”  She felt silly saying it aloud when it was just her in the shower, and when she pressed her fingers to her lips they felt so like fingers and not enough like lips that she wished she hadn’t at all.  The Ned in her mind smiled and held her, cupping her cheeks in his hands as he lowered his head to hers and there he was kissing her, that was him kissing her, that warm feeling in her stomach and in her heart, that thunking of muscle in her rib cage was Ned’s lips on hers and she sighed and reached for the soap, lathering it up well and good on her hand before she slid her fingers between her legs and began circling. 

She leaned against the tile wall of the shower, letting her legs spread for her fingers, one hand still pinching her nipple while the other soaped up skin that was already clean, filling the bathroom with the scent of lavender and chamomile and soothing calm as the water from the shower head sprayed the skin of her stomach, the tips of her breasts.  She felt her clit stiffen beneath her— _Ned’s_ in her mind, it was Ned’s hand, not her own—fingers and she imagined his eyes, his long, serious face, hovering just above hers, his dark hair shaggy in the wet of the shower as he whispered, “Oh Cat, you’re so beautiful,” and he kissed her as his fingers rubbed at her slit feverishly, faster and faster because he liked the way that she flushed and didn’t think that the red on her skin clashed with her hair at all, he thought it was perfect and wanted to see more of it, more of her, more of them as his fingers, his fingers, his fingers—

She was glad she was leaning against the wall of the shower because when her legs gave out underneath her, she could slide down and sit on the tile floor while the muscles of her vagina clenched around nothingness and she gasped for air, gasped because oh fuck, she had a thing for Ned Stark, didn’t she?


	4. Chapter 4

Cat was blushing when she looked at him.  Blushing. When she looked at him. The way he had fought off blushes and couldn’t look at her when he had…she hadn’t…had she?

No it had to be something else.  It just had to be.

* * *

 

He got a text message from Benjen while his phone was shut off during the session, and when it flashed across Ned’s screen during lunch, he frowned.

_Benjen Stark: Call me please.  It’s important._

“Chinatown?” Cat asked. Her cheeks were positively rosy, but when she caught sight of his frown, the flush faded.  “Anything wrong?”

“I need to call Ben,” he said.

“Want me to grab you some dumplings, then?” she asked.

He smiled at her. That—that right there—was what was so great about Catelyn. She knew that dumplings were always welcome.  “That would be great.  Thanks.” 

He sat down on a hardwood bench outside the courtroom and called Benjen.  He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d called Benjen. Ben was about as non-communicative as it was possible to be, and he was still in college, which meant that he often just didn’t think of being in touch.  Sometimes— _sometime_ s—he replied to sibling emails, but only if he needed to assert that he was in fact alive and hadn’t gotten lost wandering in the wilderness of northern Minnesota.

“Hello?” came a tired voice. 

“Ben?”

“Hang on. Just a second Ned.” He heard the sound of Benjen getting out of his bed, heard a door closing, and Ned stared at the speckled grey walls, waiting for Ben to tell him what was going on.

“Ned?”

“Lyanna?”

He hadn’t heard her voice in so long, and even though it was thick and groggy, as though she hadn’t yet woken up—and what was she doing at Ben’s place?—he would recognize it anywhere.

“Hi.  What’s going on?”

“Ned—I’m pregnant. And I don’t know what to do.”

Ned was glad he was sitting down because he was pretty sure he would have keeled over had he been standing. “Pregnant?  How?  With who?”

“Well…”

“Is it that married man that Brandon was going on about?”  He did his best to keep his voice from being too sharp.  Now that he thought about it, he was sure that the reason she was at Ben’s and not at home was because she couldn’t face dad.

“Brandon would go on about it,” she muttered, then sighed.  “Yes.  It’s Rhaegar’s. And yes, he’s married. And yes, his wife has no idea. And yes, I have no fucking clue what to do.”

He wondered what Cat would have said, if Lysa had called her before her abortion instead of after. He was pretty sure she would have had no idea what to do either.

“Does he know?” Ned asked. She hadn’t said yet, and her silence on the other end of the line didn’t bode well.

“Yes,” she said. “He does.  He thinks I should get rid of it.”

“And so now you don’t want to.  Because you’re a contrarian.”

“Oh shut up, Ned. It’s not because I’m a contrarian. It’s killing a baby, ok? A thing inside me.” He heard Ben saying something on the other end of the phone, and Lyanna snapped.  “Fuck you, Ben.  It’s _not_ just because he thinks I should get rid of it.  God, you both should just go fuck yourselves.  It’s my body and my kid, ok?”

“I’m sorry,” Ned said as seriously as he could.  When Lyanna was angry, sometimes she didn’t hear sincerity, and she sounded angry. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just…I’m just wrapping my head around the situation, all right?”

“Yeah, fine,” snapped Lyanna.  “Yes. I want to keep the baby, ok? And if I do, dad’ll probably kick me out of the house, and fuck if I know what to do then.”

“You don’t have a job?” Last he’d heard from her, she had had a job—something at a museum maybe? Or a gift shop? There had been displays involved.

“Not right now. Rhaegar’s been putting me up. And if I _don’t_ get rid of it, _he’ll_ probably kick me out.  You know what?  Fuck men. Fuck them and thinking they can control me and my body and my life.”

“Lyanna,” Ned intoned quietly.  One of the security guards was walking by and giving him a curious look.

“You’re only proving my point, Ned.”  Darkness dripped off her voice, and he knew she was in a mood. 

“All right, all right. What do you want from me then? Apart from being someone to sit down and shout at.”

“I…” her voice tapered off, and suddenly she sounded glum, defeated.  “I don’t really know.  I just…I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice, ok? I’ve missed you.”

“You can call me any time, you know.  You don’t have to go through Benjen.”

“You’re still living with Robert?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” she sighed.  “Look, I’ll…I’ll talk to you later.  My head hurts and I need to think.  I’m glad you called though.”

“Lyanna—” he said quickly, but a moment later, Benjen was back on the line.

“She’s kicked me out of the common room,” said Ben.  “Is there…is there anything I can do?  Brandon said to let her be, but…”

Ned sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Just keep an eye on her.  Sometimes she bites off more than she can chew.  And let me know what’s going on.”

“You bet,” Ben said.

“Things ok with you?” he asked Ben.

“Yeah.  I’m fine.  Don’t worry about me.”

“Won’t stop me,” Ned shrugged.

He heard Benjen snort. “I should have known. You ok?”

“Yep.” Ned thought of Cat and her blush and her pink lips and the fact she had offered to bring him back dumplings from Chinatown and wanted to groan.  “Just fine.”

* * *

 

“Cat?”

Her head jerked up and she stared because she hadn’t ever imagined to hear _that_ voice in a tiny restaurant in Chinatown while lost in thought about what could have made Ned’s face look so nervous when she’d left him behind at the courthouse.  But there he was, with the beginnings of a goatee growing on his chin and his green eyes bright and nervous.

“You’ve got some nerve,” she said quietly.

“I—Cat. Just hear me out, please,” Petyr said, reaching his arm out for hers.  She yanked it loose.

“Have you called Lysa since it happened?” she demanded.

“I haven’t. But Cat—please—”

“You’ve got some nerve,” she repeated coldly, glaring at him as she hadn’t glared at anyone since she had found Brandon and thatgirl naked in his bed. 

Petyr inhaled slowly, his nostrils drawing into his nose as he did.  “Your dad told me he’d kill me if I talked to her.”

“Didn’t he also threaten to dismember you if you did anything to one of us?  I seem to recall a Thanksgiving dinner. But that sure didn’t stop you.” Her heart was pounding angrily in her chest and she was struck with the urge to throw her water, or her tea, in his face, and storm out.

“Cat—I’m sorry! I really am.  Please, you must know that I love—”

“It’s _Lysa’s_ forgiveness you want.  Not mine.  Because you aren’t going to get mine.  Don’t you _dare_ come here and try and tell me who you love,” she couldn’t say it—couldn’t let him finish that sentence, wouldn’t finish it on his behalf, “and try and act like Lysa hasn’t cried to me over the phone every day this week.”  Petyr paled slightly.  “Get out.”

“Cat—”

“Get out.”

He turned on his heel and strode away, leaving her seething at her table.   

She finished her meal in a rage, and it was only when she was halfway back to the courthouse that she realized she had forgotten to get Ned’s dumplings on her way out. In a panic, she stepped into the first shop she passed and bought ten, even if it meant he wouldn’t actually have time to eat them before the court adjourned.  And when he smiled it was a strained smile, a smile that was tight in his lips, but when he popped a dumpling into his mouth, she saw a bit of relief in his eyes.  She didn’t know what had happened, but as his shoulders began to relax in the seat in front of her, she almost felt calm again.

* * *

 

“Do you ever feel like the world waits to fall apart during the summer?” she asked Ned as they were seated on the 1, making their way uptown.  “Ukraine, Israel, Missouri, my sister…” her voice trailed away glumly, and Ned reached out a hand for her.  He had finished the dumplings on the way to the train, and she had taken great pleasure in watching him down them.  He hadn’t, it had turned out, made it out for lunch after all, and he hadn’t gotten to have more than two before Judge Arryn summoned them all back into the courtroom.

“A little bit,” he sighed. “Lyanna’s pregnant.”

Cat gaped at him. “Pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“Is she all right?”

“Angry. But not about the pregnancy. More at everyone telling her what to do with it.”  Brandon would be the same way, Cat thought. 

“Are you all right?” she asked, looking up at him.  His face softened at her expression, and she felt her stomach twist at the sight of it. 

“I’m shaken. But I’m fine, I suppose.  I don’t know what she’ll do.  I don’t think she’ll tell me when she decides.”

“That’s hard.” He jerked a nod, and she could see it in his eyes—an emptiness, a sadness that she knew all too well. His little sister wasn’t a little girl anymore, and his little sister was living her life and there was only so much he could do to help her with it.

“But it’s Lyanna’s life,” he said, and his words sounded heavy.

“It is,” Cat agreed. The train stopped at 42nd Street and a group of sweaty tourists entered the car, loudly thanking the presence of air conditioning and counting the number of stops until Lincoln Center.

“I saw Petyr today,” she said.

“You did?” Ned was frowning, his brow coming together to nearly make one line, and worry crossing his face. “What did he want?”

“He wanted me to forgive him,” she said, the anger flaring up in her again.  “He wanted me to know that none of it had mattered so much as the fact that he loves me.”  She rolled her eyes.  “I told him to go away.”

“He—he didn’t actually say that, did he?”  Ned looked astonished, his eyes wide, his eyebrows raised up, no longer one line across his face.

“No,” Cat admitted. “But he as good as did. And I don’t know if that’s worse. Because it means I can only hate the inference.”  She shuddered. “He didn’t have _one thing_ to say about Lysa.  As if he could claim to love me and not care about the people in my life…”

“Hmm,” Ned was frowning now.  “It’s like he doesn’t know you.  It’s like he loves an image of you.”

“Exactly,” she said, beaming at Ned because of _course_ Ned would get it without needing a lot of an explanation.  Of _course_ Ned would understand.  Ned understood everything perfectly, and easily.  It was almost as though he knew what she was going to say, what she was going to think, even before she said it, thought it—as though their hearts beat the same beat.  How did Petyr even stand a chance when she had Ned sitting there, caring about everything that was and wasn’t her?  “And that’s not real love, is it?  Loving someone’s image.  That’s not really seeing them for who they are—not really understanding them.”  Suddenly, she felt very nervous, as though she were standing on the edge of a cliff, because oh god, oh god—it wasn’t _a thing_ , was it?  She didn’t have _a thing_ for Ned…she was…she was—

Ned was shaking his head. “That’s why Robert doesn’t love Lyanna,” he was saying.  “He doesn’t see her. He sees an image of her—not how she actually is. He loves the idea of her. Like Petyr loves the idea of you. But to actually love you…” He blushed. He actually blushed, oh goodness, he was blushing and that could only mean he was hiding what he thought, right?  He was going to keep going, and say that he loved her, and her heart was thudding in her throat because she _wanted_ him to say it—with the same intensity she hadn’t wanted Petyr to.  She wanted him to tell her he loved her—needed him to, because if he did, then that meant he also felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff right now.

But he didn’t say a word. He just looked away, watching as tourists disembarked at Lincoln Center.  He stayed silent for two whole stops, and Cat felt her heart thudding in her chest the entire time as she watched him, watched as he licked his lips nervously, as he swallowed, as he did anything but look at her and she _knew_ she was right. He loved her—she was sure of it, and, god—she loved him too.

The train approached 86th Street and Catelyn leaned towards him, reaching out and taking his cheek in her hand.  He closed his eyes and she saw his face relax against her hand and she kissed him, and his lips were soft—so much softer than she’d fantasized, and they trembled against hers and she was actually kissing him, feeling his stubble, the breath coming out of his nose against her upper lip.

“Cat,” he breathed and she pulled away and saw nervousness in his eyes.  “Cat—I…Brandon…I…”

Her heart stopped with the train, and she practically flew out the doors in her horror, in her humiliation, and she ignored the sound of him calling after as she pushed through the turnstile and hurried up the steps.

It had to be that Ned felt loyal to his brother.  That was it. Loyalty.  God—she could cry, because how could she ask him to love her?  Was she turning into Petyr?  Or was this all Brandon’s fault and not hers.  Yes—better to blame Brandon.  Brandon, who would ruin everything in her life for her, even this, especially this. Why did Ned have to be so damn honorable? Why did she have to love him for it?

* * *

 

“’Sup Bro?”

He was driving again, Ned could tell from the wind coming in through his earpiece, and he sounded so casual in his greeting that it almost made Ned’s blood boil.  But no—he couldn’t be angry at Brandon. It wasn’t Brandon’s fault that Cat had looked like she was going to cry as she’d stumbled out of the subway car. It wasn’t Brandon’s fault that he’d gone and fucked that up—and right after she’d kissed him too. That was entirely on him. Completely and utterly.

“I spoke to Lyanna earlier,” he said.

“Yeah.  I did too.  I think she’s going to keep it,” Brandon still sounded casual.

“That’s what she said,” Ned said stiffly.

“Well, looks like we’ll be in competition for best uncle, I suppose.  I’ll win, just to warn you.”  Of course he would.  Brandon won everything.  But, if he was careful… “That’s not why you’re calling, though,” Brandon said.

“Not entirely,” Ned admitted.

“Want my blessing to fuck Cat Tully, then?” Brandon laughed.  It stung—that even though they were thousands of miles apart, and barely spoke these days, Brandon still knew him well enough to know that this, and not Lyanna, was the reason Ned was calling.  And Ned wouldn’t even deign it with a response. Because yes—it mattered to him that Brandon was fine with it.  He wasn’t going to sink to Brandon’s level and just _do it_ without thinking of the ramifications. Though if he had sunk to Brandon’s level, maybe she wouldn’t look as if she would cry when she’d torn herself away from him…

“Get on with it. Is that it?”

“Brandon, you’re an unmitigated ass sometimes,” Ned snapped.  Oh this would end well.  He hit himself on the forehead.

Brandon laughed. “I know.  It’s what people like about me.  But that’s it, right?”

“Yes.” God, Brandon had to make him admit…it wasn’t about fucking her.  That was the sort of thing Robert would say, or do, or want. He wanted to keep taking the train with her every day for the rest of his life.  That wasn’t…if it were just about fucking her, maybe he wouldn’t…no he would probably still need Brandon to condone it simply because Brandon had found her first and she would be forever his unless Brandon…god he sounded like a caveman.  He felt like a caveman.  But it still mattered.  Brandon needed to say…

“Get on with it, then. I don’t give a fuck who you fuck. Treat her well and she likes oral.”

The line went dead and Ned only realized his hand was trembling when he dropped his phone. It was…it was going to be all right.  He knew it. Because he could fix it. And Brandon really and truly didn’t care.  He didn’t give one fuck at all, and fuck him because of everything, but thank god because what would Ned have done if he’d said it wasn’t fine?

* * *

 

The twelve of them met in a room with an ovular table and Nymeria Martell read the list of charges laid against Jorah Mormont and proceeded with the vote.

Ned listened as intently as he could, focused on every syllable uttered, every opinion raised, every “guilty” and “not guilty” because if he didn’t focus on it, he would focus on how Cat looked pale, how she wasn’t wearing makeup and her lips were a little more pink and a little less red than usual, and her eyelashes were a dark red and not their usual black.  Even so, when she murmured a quiet “guilty” Ned’s stomach lurched in a way that it hadn’t when Gregor Clegane had said the same word.

They weren’t in the room very long.  And when they filed back into the courtroom to pronounce the decision, and Judge Arryn gave his sentencing and dismissed them, Catelyn practically sprinted for the door.

“Cat—” he called after her, but she’d been sitting at the edge of the box and was making her way through the crowd already, ignoring him, and he had to wait for Moshe Bar Emmon, Nestor Royce, and Luthor Tyrell to move before he could chase her. He didn’t bother waiting for the elevator when he got there, taking the stairs three at a time and practically flying past the building’s security towards the 1.  He saw her up ahead, descending the stairs into the subway and, as he reached the turnstile himself, he saw a train pulling out of the station. 

He had missed her. It was over.

Except—no. No it wasn’t.  He wasn’t going to let it—because she’d kissed him, she had didn’t want to compare him to Brandon, and her smile made him feel like there was nothing in the world but the two of them, swimming naked beneath the stars. 

So he got off the train at 86th Street and ran five blocks to her apartment, pressing the buzzer to her apartment, because he needed to explain that that _wasn’t_ what he meant when he had said Brandon’s name. It wasn’t it at all.

She didn’t buzz him up, but it didn’t matter.  A woman with three children was coming out and Ned held the door open for her after she pushed it open with a smile and, once she was safely out on the street, darted up the stairs as quickly as he could.  He knocked on Cat’s door.  “Cat,” he called.  “Please—Cat.”

But she didn’t open the door.  She didn’t even respond and he had half a mind to knock the door down, but that would get him arrested and probably wouldn’t solve any problems so much as make more for him. So he kept knocking, even though he didn’t have any real hope that she’d let him in.

“Ned?”

He whirled around. She was standing there, holding a shopping bag—her eyes surprised and nervous and blue and if he were Brandon he’d march over to her and kiss her senseless but he was Ned so he took a step back from her door and said, sheepishly, “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.  All right then.”

She unlocked the door to the apartment and let him inside, then went straight into the kitchen and began filling her fridge.  He noticed some eggs, milk, and several pints of ice cream.  That wasn’t a good sign—Lyanna had warned him long ago what ice cream meant.  Or maybe it was.  Because if she was upset…

“Cat, yesterday, in the subway—”

“Forget it. I thought…I was stupid. I understand.  I won’t come between you and your brother. I’m not that kind of a person. I just…yeah.”  His heart soared.  That she’d say that—that meant…

“No—that’s exactly it,” he didn’t even bother keeping the excitement out of his voice. “Cat, you were right. I…I just…” how could he say it? How could he phrase it? Because looking at her, the way that her jaw was jutted out, she might not necessarily respond well to the whole caveman thing.  She probably wouldn’t actually.  But she needed to understand…

“You just what?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Cat—I needed to…I needed to make sure…I couldn’t hurt Brandon too.  Like—I can’t—”

“So you called him and he said it was all right?” Cat said dryly.  She wasn’t supposed to be frowning that way.  She wasn’t supposed to be angry.

“Well…” he said sheepishly.

Her eyes narrowed. “And what precisely would you have done if he’d said it wasn’t fine?  If he’d still staked his claim in me?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“You would have dropped me?” she asked and he heard a sting in her voice, a click, some moment of pain that she was trying to keep quiet because she wasn’t going to show him weakness. Oh Cat, as if he could. He shook his head.

“I wouldn’t have,” he said slowly.  “I don’t know what I would have done.  I wouldn’t have dropped you though.”  He laughed. “Cat, I couldn’t drop you. I…”  _love you._

“You what?” she demanded and she was angry and oh god, he wasn’t going to walk into some trap now was he? He wasn’t going to be like Petyr, who didn’t see that Cat was angry with him.

“I want to do the right thing,” he said, changing tactics.  “I…I needed to make sure that it would be all right.  I’m…I’m not the type of person who just does things impulsively.  I need to make sure that things—”

“Go according to plan?”

“Yes, but more than that. That they’re handled well. Handled…honorably? And look, I couldn’t just…no matter what I feel about you, Cat, I couldn’t just…and not care about how Brandon would feel.  That’s something Brandon would do, not something I would do.”  Her frown faltered, and he pressed on, hope—wild hope, blinding hope guiding him home.  “So no—I don’t know what I would have done if Brandon hadn’t been fine with it.  But I needed to check, don’t you see?  I needed to. And if he hadn’t been fine, I would have figured something out, Cat, because—because I—”

But she didn’t let him say it, she had thought of quite a different use for his lips as she took his head in her hands and kissed him even more thoroughly than she had on the subway the day before.  Her tongue traced the opening of his mouth and he let her in, let Cat in and oh she tasted better than anything he could ever have imagined, even in his wildest moments. He groaned and brought his arms around her, pulling her closer to him, feeling the press of her breasts, the warmth of her heart beating against his chest as he kissed her as thoroughly as he could.

* * *

 

She had never felt more alive—never, not even close—as she did tugging Ned through the door of her bedroom and pulling him on top of her as they hit her bed. He smelled of peppermint soap and stale sweat and even though the window to her bedroom was open and she could hear the sounds of the street outside, it was as if she and Ned were completely alone, completely alone and together and perfect.  Because he was perfect—he truly was, coming here right when she’d been ready to cry her eyes out again and drown her misery in Ben and Jerry’s.  He was perfect, coming to explain, and his reasons were perfect and the weight of him pressing down on her was perfect as she sighed into his lips and ran her hands over the muscles of his back, feeling the way that they flexed as he held himself up so as not to crush her. 

She distantly heard the thunk of his shoes hitting the ground, and a moment later he was gently nudging her a little further up the bed so that her head was resting on a pillow as he dropped his lips to hers once again, his tongue pressing into her, tasting her, drinking her, dancing around her tongue as they kissed. He tasted like coffee and apples and something else that she liked but couldn’t place and she moaned slightly when he pulled his tongue away so that he could nibble at her trembling lips.

“Oh Ned,” she breathed and she felt his lips quirk up into a smile as he continued to nip at her lips, kissing them raw and dry and she loved every second of it.  She let her hands drift to his chest, resting gently on his pecs, her thumbs seeking out his nipples through the cotton fabric of his button down and he whispered a moan when she found them. He rolled to his side and his hand was on her stomach now, just below her breasts and her heart was pounding in her throat because when he did touch them, when he held them, she knew she would die. 

But he didn’t do it, he just let his hand rest in the bottom arch of her ribs as he kissed her, a slow kiss, a patient kiss, the kiss of someone who isn’t waiting for anything but would be content to lie there happily and just kiss for the rest of the afternoon.

Cat rubbed her leg against his, feeling the skirt of her dress ride up as she did and she heard a noise coming from low in his throat.  She could prompt him, she supposed.  She could ask him to hold her, to unbutton her dress, to suckle her until her skin was flushed and tender, but instead, she reached a hand down and cupped his cock which was pressing stiff against her thigh. 

Ned yelped and broke their kiss, his eyes searching hers out. “Cat?” he breathed, as if he couldn’t believe it, as if he truly hadn’t expected.  She laughed gently and pulled his lips back down to hers, and only then did he reach up to cup her breast, gently, hesitantly.

She moaned—perhaps louder than she had intended to, but she wanted to get the point across, and she did, because his grip grew sturdier and she felt his other hand finding the buttons that ran down the front of her dress and unfastening them before he slipped his hand over her bra, toying gently with the nipple he felt through the white cotton.  She ran her hand along his cock again before bringing it up to his button down, undoing the buttons she found there as quickly as she could while he continued circling her nipple and she wasn’t sure when exactly, but her skirt had now ridden up to her hips—she could tell because he was rubbing his cock into her hip and it was her hip, not her skirt.  She sighed into his mouth as she finished unbuttoning him and he broke the kiss long enough to sit up and do away with his shirt and while he did, she tugged up his undershirt and threw it across the room, pulling him down to her.

God, he was hot, the very heat of him filling her with a wild joy as she felt his chest against hers, the soft down of his chest hair, the sweat on his skin, the beating of his heart as he kissed her.  He had unbuttoned her dress to the waist and had given up on getting it off her, it seemed, because he had tugged it down her shoulders just far enough for him to slip off the straps of her bra and let her breast pop free and—she moaned again because his mouth was hot on her nipple, hot and wet and his tongue was circling, circling, circling and her eyelids fluttered and she smiled and shifted her hips, even though there was nothing there—nothing there _yet_ , anyway, because the heat of his mouth was far more perfect than anything she could have wanted. 

Perfect—Ned was perfect. He truly was, more than she had ever imagined and when he released her breast and moved on to the other one, she found his belt buckle, unfastened it, and unbuttoned his pants, pushing them down with her hands and, when she could no longer reach them, with her feet.  She found him then with her hands, his shaft thick and heavy through the cotton of his boxer shorts and he whimpered into her breasts as she began to pump him through the fabric. She smiled to herself, smiled as he shifted his hips up the bed a little so that she would have better access, smiled because she knew that any minute now, she would be able to reasonably tell him that she had condoms in her bathroom and she’d get him one and after she put it on him she’d suck his cock deep down into her throat, because she’d always loved sucking cocks—loved the feeling of control as he came apart in her mouth and she grinned because she knew that Ned wouldn’t even know what had hit him. 

She smiled to herself as he released her breast, as she continued pumping his cock in her hand, letting him kiss his way across her stomach because it would be a nearly fair time soon—nearly fair and…oh.

He had shoved up her skirt and was tugging her underpants down her legs and—god they were such unsexy underpants, white cotton granny panties because he was supposed to be gone, he wasn’t supposed to have followed her home, but he hardly seemed to care as he stripped them down her legs.  And before she had even realized it was happening, his lips were on her and the insistent suckling, the licking and nipping game he’d just played on her breasts he now played on her clit, drawing it into his lips and circling it with his tongue.  He shifted her legs further apart gently, and then lifted her thighs, one at a time, so that they came to rest on his shoulders, which tilted her pelvis up slightly giving him better access to her clit.

She felt a hot rush escape her and she let out a quiet cry, all too aware that the window was open as she rubbed herself onto his tongue while his fingers reached down and circled her labia as if unsure if he _could_ slip them inside her.  He had no idea what he was doing to her, did he?  He couldn’t know, couldn’t possibly know that this was simultaneously filling her with everything and leaving her completely empty and she wanted, she wanted, she wanted…

She shuddered and moaned and her clit throbbed in his mouth and the world roared around her and she gasped for air, and she wanted to cry out, to shout his name, but she couldn’t—couldn’t fill the room with the sound of her orgasm because it would go out onto the street and there was a school down the block and what if the children heard on their way home and regardless of that it would just be unseemly but oh, her heart was everywhere inside her all at once and she could scarcely bear it.  But she could. Because Ned was there with her.

He was smiling at her shyly from between her legs when she propped herself up on her elbows. “Ned,” she breathed. How was he real, how was he there, smiling at her like a puppy having just licked her to heaven and back?

“Cat,” he whispered and she bent over and kissed him, tasted him, tasted her on his tongue.

“I have condoms in my bathroom,” she said quietly.  He got up almost at once and disappeared out of her room, his boxers tenting around him and when he was gone, she unhooked her bra and slid the dress off her completely. She also went and closed the window, and turned on the air conditioning, letting the breeze blow over her nipples, cooling them so that Ned could warm them up again.  She heard him come into the room but she didn’t move, smiling when she felt his arms wrapping around her and the distinct feeling of latex on his cock. 

“You aren’t too cold?” he asked her, his breath warm against her ear and his thumb and forefinger came up to her stiffened nipple, twisting it lightly.

“If I am, you’ll warm me up,” she said, turning around and his mouth was crushed to hers again, his hands in the curve between her hips and her ribs and she twined her arms around his neck, pulling him as close to her as she could get as he pulled them back to the bed. 

She spread her legs, waiting for him, but he did not push into her right away.  She felt his fingers again, circling her entrance, rubbing her still-sensitive clit and she bucked her hips slightly into his hand. Then his fingers were gone, and she felt the rubber pushing into her and with a slight sting and a sigh, he was sheathed in her, warm and hard and rocking back and forth.

She found his lips again and kissed him, her fingers weaving through his dark hair as she rocked her hips against his, relishing the stretch of herself around him, the way she fit around him in a way that felt wholly different than anyone else she’d fucked because this time it was Ned.  Ned and his soft grey eyes and his persistent lips and his fingers circling her too-sensitive clit again as he thrust into her, Ned and his gentle grunts and his boyish smiles, Ned and his laugh and his cock warming her from the inside out.

And before she had even realized it, before she’d even thought it possible, she felt herself clenching around him, felt her heart thudding in her chest, her clit pulsating against his fingers as she gasped for air and dug her fingers into his back. And while her legs tightened around his hips, curled around him, it was not her legs that made her feel like she was drawing him into her, it was her clasping cunt, holding his cock inside her.

She could hardly breathe, hardly think, hardly feel anything except the way he filled her and voided her, filled her and voided her as she lay there, holding onto him as though her life depended on it.  And some part of her, some quiet voice, told her that her life _did_ depend on it, because what could her life truly be without Ned and his lips on her neck and his gasps as he moved faster, delving into her with more speed, more need…And then he stilled, dropping down onto her as his cock twitched and pulsed within her.  She ran her fingers through his hair as he breathed, as his heart thudded in his chest.

“Cat,” he whispered into her neck.  And it sounded like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.  Instead, he rolled away from her, tugged away the latex from his cock, and then came back to curl himself around her, his back to the air conditioner.

“I love you,” she whispered to him, pressing a kiss to his lips, slowly, lazily.

And slowly a smile spread across his face, wider than she’d ever seen there before.  “And I love you.”

And she could have cried she was so happy.  How on earth had this day ended so perfectly?

* * *

 

**Six Months Later**

“Are you Cat’s new boyfriend then?” the boy asked.  Boy, Ned thought wryly—he was Ben’s age at best, with Cat’s bright blue eyes and her dark red hair. 

“Ned Stark,” he said extending his hand.

“Edmure Tully,” said Edmure, grinning as he took Ned’s hand.  He had a fine grip.

“Can I take your coat, Ned?” came a familiar voice from the living room with all the airs of the older sibling reminding the younger how to be polite.

“Can I take your coat, Ned?” Edmure said quickly, flushing.  Ned shrugged his jacket off and handed it to Edmure, who crossed the entryway and hung it up in a coat closet even as Cat came out of the living room wearing a blue skirt that swished around her legs and a set of pearls. She rested her hands on his chest as she kissed him, and when she pulled away, she straightened his shirt.

“Flight ok?” she asked him.

“Yeah.  It was fine,” he smiled.

“Good,” she said. “I’ve missed you.” And she kissed him again, and if they weren’t in her father’s house he would have wrapped his arms around her a little more thoroughly.  But they were, so he contented himself with her lips and his hands at her waist.

“I’ve missed you too,” he whispered when they broke apart again, resting his forehead to hers.   “Home all right?”

She smiled, and shrugged a shrug that said, ‘I’ll tell you later’ more thoroughly than if she’d said the words outright, and he dipped his mouth to hers again.

He heard the clearing of a throat and automatically took a step away from Cat, who laughed and turned to face her father.

“Dad—this is Ned,” she said brightly.  “He’s the love of my life, and you should treat him accordingly.”


End file.
